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PAN-GERMANISM 

VERSUS 

CHRISTENDOM 



PAN-GERMANISM 

VERSUS 

CHRISTENDOM 

THE CONVERSION 
OF A NEUTRAL 

BEING AN OPEN LETTER BY M. EMILE PRUM 



EDITED AND WITH COMMENTS BY 

RENE JOHANNET 

■I 



HODDER & STOUGHTON 

NEW YORK 

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



Us 



5 



2 



Printed in Great Britain by 

Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, 

brunswick st., stamford st., s.e., 

and bungay, suffolk. 



ZY. 



PREFACE 

The spiritual drama whose theatre was 
the mind of M. Priim involved a multitude 
of actors, but only two protagonists — 
M. Priim and the partner he himself 
selected : Herr Erzberger. 

A Catholic, the leader of the Catholic 
party of Luxembourg, a Catholic in lan- 
guage, thought, and culture, and of German 
sympathies, a member of the Permanent 
Committee of the International Eucharistic 
Congresses, Commander of the Pontifical 
Order of St. Sylvester, honoured on every 
possible occasion by the pontifical favour, 
an ex-Deputy, Burgomaster of Clervaux, 
and by profession a manufacturer, M. Priim 
has filled, and continues to fill, a prominent 
position in the Grand Duchy of Luxem- 
bourg, where he has always been ready in 
the defence of Catholic liberties. Regard- 
ing the scholastic policy of the Prime 



vi PREFACE 

Minister, M. Eyschen, which was largely 
anti-clerical, as a mischievous importation 
from France, M. Priim was, on account of 
his Catholicism, anti-French. 

Then came the war, and the violation of 
the neutrality of Belgium and Luxembourg ; 
accompanied, in Germany, by a state of 
exaltation which is not yet allayed. Then 
followed the German atrocities in Belgium. 
M. Priim, who was favourably situated in 
the matter of observation, and particularly- 
well informed, watched, observed, medi- 
tated, and drew his own conclusions. 

The pamphlet here translated, which a 
curious hazard placed in our hands, 1 con- 

1 It first appeared in the form of articles pub- 
lished by two small Luxembourg newspapers — the 
Clerfer Echo, appearing in the town of which M. 
Priim is the Burgomaster, and Fortschritt, appearing 
in Diekirch; it was then published separately in 
booklet form, but was immediately seized by the 
Luxembourg police, in accordance with the request 
of the German authorities. However, we were en- 
abled to procure a copy of this booklet. Here is the 
title in full— 

Die deutsche Kriegfuhrung in Belgien und die 
Mahnungen Benedict XV, offenes Schreiben an Hm. 
Math. Erzberger, Reichstagabgeordneter in Berlin. Von 



PREFACE - vii 

tains the result of M. Prtim's meditations. 
After a careful perusal we are able to assert 
in all impartiality that M. Priim has, by 
reason of his Catholicism, become anti- 
German. 

By close association, M. Priim was per- 
fectly acquainted with the Catholic move- 
ment in modern Germany ; he was assiduous 
in his attendance at the German Catholic 
Congresses, and he enjoyed personal rela- 
tions with most of the leaders of the Centre ; 
he was a contributor to those reviews which 
were the organs of the Centre, and he atten- 
tively followed the developments of this 

Emil Priim, Burgermeister zu Clerf (Grossherzogturn 
Luxemburg). Dietrich. Druck und Verlag des Fort- 
schritt. Inhaber : P. Cariers, 1915. 

Which, being translated, is — 

The German conduct of hostilities in Belgium and 
the instructions of Benedict XV. Open letter to Herr 
Mathias Erzberger, member of the Reichstag, Berlin, 
by Emile Priim, Burgomaster of Clervaux (Grand- 
Duchy of Luxembourg), Dietrich. Printing and pub- 
lishing offices of Fortschritt. P. Cariers, proprietor, 
1915. 

The pamphlet contains forty- two pages. 

Le Correspondant of April 25 and May 10, and 
La Croix of April 21-23, were the first papers to 
mention the " Priim affair." 



viii PREFACE 

great party — developments which, as we 
shall see, he sometimes found far from 
reassuring. 

It was not without reason that he selected 
Herr Erzberger as his interlocutor. His 
motives, we believe, are not difficult to 
divine. 

Herr Erzberger represents the new, up- 
to-date " man of the Centre/' who is very 
far removed from the old heroic and dis- 
interested type. 1 Born in 1875, he entered 
the Reichstag in 1903, where the sometime 
primary schoolmaster from Swabia rapidly 
became the spokesman of his party, even 
of the Empire, which recently sent him to 
Italy as its semi-official ambassador. An 
indefatigable worker, a man of violent 
character and sanguine temperament, after 
desperately opposing the Imperial Govern- 
ment he very soon became its blind and 
unscrupulous servant. On introducing the 
budgets of the army, navy and colonies, 
he has often adopted a semi-Pan-Germanist 
attitude, which the war was to transform 

3 See Appendix. 



PREFACE ix 

into Pan-Germanism of the extreme and 
unconditional type. 

It was to this representative German 
politician that M. Priim addressed his 
memorial. 

It is a defence of Catholicism and a 
statement of its doctrine ; but it is also a 
generous and high-minded inquiry into the 
evolution of the German Centre, conducted 
by an admirer of that party. 1 

But we will leave the two protagonists 
to speak for themselves. 

Rene Johannet. 2 

1 We shall presently describe and comment upon 
the prosecutions instituted against M. Priim by Herr 
Erzberger and the Public Prosecutor of Luxembourg. 

2 The Appendix and other comment by M. Johannet 
is translated from La Conversion d'un Catholique 
Germanophile, published by A. Quingnon, 16 Rue 
Alphonse Daudet, Paris. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

PREFACE v 

I. THE GERMAN HOSTILITIES IN BEL- 
GIUM AND THE INSTRUCTIONS 
OF BENEDICT XV— AN OPEN 
LETTER FROM M. PRUM TO 
HERR ERZBERGER . . . . i 

II. THE PROCEEDINGS INSTITUTED 

AGAINST M. PRUM .... 78 

1. PUBLICATION AND SEIZURE OF THE 

PAMPHLET 78 

2. HERR ERZBERGER PROSECUTES M. 

PRUM 81 

3. THE LUXEMBOURG GOVERNMENT TO 

THE AID OF HERR ERZBERGER . 84 

4. M. PRUM'S DEFENCE AND JUSTIFICA- 

TION 91 

5. HERR ERZBERGER REPLIES : M. PRttM 

REFUTES HIM 101 

6. CONCLUSION 108 

xi 



xii CONTENTS 



PAGE 



III. APPENDIX: THE EVOLUTION OF THE 

GERMAN CATHOLIC CENTRE . no 

i. THE QUINTESSENCE OF GERMANISM, no 

2. FROM CATHOLICISM TO PAN-GER- 

MANISM . . . . . .120 

3. THE BIRTH, STRUGGLES, VICTORY 

AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CENTRE 128 

4. "INTERCONFESSIONALISM" AND THE 

"CHRISTIAN LABOUR GUILDS" . 136 

5. THE DECLERICALISATION OF THE 

CENTRE 154 

6. THE DANGER TO CATHOLICISM IS IN 

GERMANY 180 



I 

PAN-GERMANISM 
versus CHRISTENDOM 

"The German Conduct of Hostilities 

in Belgium and the Instructions 

of Benedict XV." 

An Open letter from M. Emile Prum, 
Leader of the Catholic Party of Lux- 
embourg, Member of the Permanent 
Committee of the International Euchar- 
istic Congresses, to Herr Mathias 
Erzberger, Member of the Reichstag, 
Leader of the Catholic Centre Party 
of Germany. 
(Seized and prohibited in Germany.) 

Honoured Sir, 

You have lately displayed a literary 
activity in the Press which, even beyond 
the frontiers of the German Empire, has 



2 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

created some sensation, and has even 
caused a great deal of surprise. Rightly or 
wrongly, you are often regarded as the 
spokesman of the party of the Centre, 
which is to-day so influential in Germany, 
and which will remain influential so long 
as it renders disinterested services to the 
preponderant party of the landowners from 
the east of the Elbe. 1 Articles emanating 
from your pen are consequently endowed 
with an unusual significance. 

You must not, therefore, be surprised 
that your numerous contributions to the 
Press have attracted considerable atten- 
tion, even beyond the Empire, and have 
even more frequently provoked violent 
contradiction. You should know, in the 
first place, that the Catholics of the neutral 
States have been painfully impressed by 
your journalistic manifestations. In Swit- 
zerland there have been public and forcible 
protests against your manner of regarding 
affairs. From this you will understand 
that in Luxembourg, which is directly 

1 Ost-Elbiertum : the landowners from the east 
of the Elbe, considered as a body. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 3 

interested, people are inimical to you and 
your attitude. 

With us, as in all countries, the Catholic 
cause has numerous and implacable enemies. 
It is therefore absolutely necessary to make 
sure that the Catholics of other countries 
shall not be reproached for such moral 
aberrations as those which you have been 
publicly displaying for months past, and 
which have met with no contradiction 
from your political co-religionists. 

Undoubtedly the German Centre has 
lately undergone a modification. This 
great party, which sprang from the old 
Catholic faction in the Prussian Chamber, 1 
has completely changed its nature. 

By the terms of the official appeal of 
1870, it was founded in the form of a 
" Union of the Catholic population of 
Germany " by Mgr. von Ketteler, von 
Mallinkrodt, the brothers Reichensperger, 
and Windthorst, 1 all men who never ceased 
to fight for right and justice, against the 
Bismarckian policy of blood and iron — 
to fight with inflexible constancy and 
1 See Appendix. 



4 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

unshakable courage. Windthorst, the un- 
forgettable leader of the Centre, remained 
until his last breath the faithful subject 
and councillor of his lawful Prince, the 
King of Hanover, dispossessed by Prussia, 
although he never allowed this to interfere 
in any way with those new duties which 
the reconstitution of the German Empire 
had imposed on him. 

Abroad, then, we were accustomed, espe- 
cially since the initiation of the Kulturkamfif, 
to regard the Centre with admiration and 
respect, as the political representation of 
the German people, the knightly phalanx 
of the champions of truth, liberty, and 
justice. In the ex-Catholic Press of Ger- 
many, which is to-day merely the Press 
of the Centre, the organisation of the 
German Centre was continually repre- 
sented as the model to be imitated by 
Catholics all the world over, and the 
Kolnische Volkszeitung x treated us at least 

1 The Kolnische Volkszeitung and the Berlin Ger- 
mania are the two principal organs of the German 
Centre. The former represents and inspires the 
political tendencies of the new Centre. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 5 

once a fortnight to the famous Germania 
docet. 

You will understand that under these 
circumstances the enemies of the Catholic 
cause in non-German countries are attempt- 
ing to hold us Catholics responsible for the 
attitude which the German Centre has 
assumed in respect of the international 
questions of the day. These attacks have 
a semblance of justification so long as no 
formal protest has been made on our side. 

I am very well aware that the present 
party of the Centre no longer wishes to be 
a Catholic party, and that the leaders of 
the party have ruthlessly refused to admit 
that " the Centre, in its political, social, 
and cultural activities, should remain essen- 
tially in agreement with Catholic teach- 
ing " (see Roeren, Verdnderte Lage des 
Zentrumsstreites 1 ). The Centre must now 
be regarded merely as an " intercon- 
fessional " German party, and purely 
Nationalist. 

Nationalism, years ago condemned by 

1 There is a " Roeren affair " in the German 
Centre. See Appendix. 



6 PAN-GERMANISM v* CHRISTENDOM 

His Holiness Pius IX 1 as the greatest and 
most dangerous error of our time, has 
been promoted to the height of a sovereign 
precept by the Centre of to-day. Your 
recent publications are the irrefutable proof 
of this. 

* sj« * * * 

You have not merely, with the bulk of 
your party, approved, without restriction, 
of the violation of the neutrality of Belgium 
and Luxembourg, and therefore of the 

1 We asked a well-known theologian for an ex- 
planation of this passage. Here is his reply — 

" The only nationalism (if any) which has to my 
knowledge been condemned by the Church is that 
nationalism of the ' immoralist ' type, in whose 
eyes the love of country would legitimise every 
species of crime. This is precisely the doctrine and 
the abominable practice of Germany. But the term 
nationalism would here be extremely equivocal, for 
in its legitimate sense it signifies normal patriotism, 
which is a virtue commanded and blessed by God 
and the Church.' ' — B.M. One may also refer the 
reader to an article by Canon Gandeau in La 'Foi 
Catholique, April-May 1915 : Le danger pour VEglise 
est en Allemagne. See also Pages actuelles : Rectitude 
et perversion du sens national, by C. Jullian, Professor 
in the College of France. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 7 

violation of all treaties; you have gone 
much, much further than this. Germany, 
you maintain, in one of your last published 
articles, can no longer allow any indepen- 
dent State to divide her western frontier 
from the Channel. The German Army 
must not have suffered such great losses 
in vain; so you recommend the eventual 
annexation to Germany of Belgium, and 
therefore of Luxembourg. 

In your last article in the Berlin Tag 
you even make this hideous assertion : 
" The more pitiless and cruel war is, the 
more humane it is, because it is then more 
quickly brought to a satisfactory end." * 
So, you say, the Germans must use all 
possible means of destroying their adver- 
saries. Certainly the aim of all warfare is 
to subdue the army of the enemy, and 
this is why the antagonists are permitted 
to inflict on one another the greatest 
possible injury. Nevertheless, this theory 
is valid only for military operations. But 
you, Sir, contrary to all hitherto admitted 

1 This is not original. See note to p. 35. — B.M. 



8 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

ideas of international law, would extend 
this harsh necessity of warfare to every- 
thing and every one on hostile territory. 
Thus you express the desire to see London 
completely annihilated, if only such a 
thing were possible. To your thinking 
nothing and no one should be spared; 
neither women, nor children, nor the aged, 
nor public buildings, nor churches, nor 
private dwellings, nor any other kind of 
property. All may be destroyed, provided 
victory is achieved. And after this you 
would still pass for a Catholic — for the 
representative and leader of the German 
Catholics, in a party which — to be sure — 
is interconfessional ! 

$ * * * * 

I am perfectly well aware that the point 
of view which you adopt is that of the 
most eminent modern military writers, 1 
for whom the terrorisation of the civil 

1 M. Priim evidently means to refer to German 
military writers, for the point of view which he 
rightly condemns has never been adopted by French 
or British writers, nor by French or British armies 
in the field.— B.M. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 9 

population of occupied territories is one 
of the chief necessities of modern warfare. 
And so a magnificent country, which only 
eight months ago was, relatively to its 
area, the richest and most thickly popu- 
lated country in the world, has now in 
many parts been transformed into a wilder- 
ness of ruins, while a great proportion of 
its inhabitants have been reduced to men- 
dicity. It seems absolutely puerile to seek 
to contradict this fact at the present 
moment, or to endeavour to conceal it 
from the German people ; it is irrefutably 
established in the eyes of the whole world. 
The only thing to be done was to admit 
the facts officially and to extricate oneself 
from the business to the best of one's 
ability. If, from the midst of a people of 
seven million souls, we must select one 
individual piece of testimony — confirmed 
by so many graves, so many ruins I— let 
us take the Christmas Pastoral Letter of 
that most scholarly of all contemporary 
Princes of the Church, Cardinal Mercier, 
or the Easter mandamus of the pious 
Bishop of Namur, President of the Inter- 



10 PAN-GERMANISM p. CHRISTENDOM 

national Eucharistic Congresses, so revered 
in both hemispheres. 

The point of view of the military writers 
in this connection is perfectly comprehen- 
sible. They have only one object in sight, 
and that is of a strategic order. For the 
rest they care nothing. But you, Sir, who 
are the representative of the German people 
and its general interests, including its non- 
military interests — you ought to regard 
matters from a very different point of view. 

Please do not misinterpret my words. 
I have the profoundest respect for the 
intense patriotism of the German people, 
and I unreservedly admire the spirit of 
absolute union displayed, in this great 
war, by all classes of the people. But we 
must not forget that the war is merely a 
transient phenomenon. However long it 
may continue — whether it last eighteen 
months, 1 as Giolitti will have it, or three 
years, as Lord Kitchener declares — peace 
will at length return, and then, even in 
the obvious interest of your Germany, 
there must be a reconciliation between 
1 Written in March 191 1. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 11 

the peoples. But how will such a recon- 
ciliation be possible if men in your position, 
to whom, moreover, strategic considerations 
are absolutely foreign, invoke principles 
which can only end in digging an impass- 
able gulf of hatred between Germany and the 
rest of Europe ? Quite lately Germany has 
again conducted a most instructive experi- 
ment as regards the results of organised 
national hatred. 

Just as Germany to-day bids Germans 
"Hate the English!" so yesterday she 
cried " Hate the Belgians ! " and the day 
before yesterday " Hate the Poles and all 
that is Polish ! " 

As to the results of the anti-Polish policy 
of Prussia during the present war, here is 
the evidence of the Historisch-Politische 
Blatter, 1 No. 135 3 . At the beginning of 
June 1914 a " German Day " was cele- 
brated, 2 when violent attacks were made 

1 Historisch-Politische Blatter fur das Katholische 
Deutschland, a review established at Munich in 1838. 
It has a large circulation as an organ of the Centre. 

2 A day devoted to national manifestations in 
the Press and on the platform. 



12 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

upon the Polentum and the dangers to 
which the State was exposed therefrom. 
It was asserted that a whole series of 
Draconian laws must be drafted against 
the Poles, to increase the forces of Ger- 
manisation in the frontier provinces of the 
East. 1 But then the war suddenly broke 
out, and with it the need was felt of a 
reconciliation with the Poles; not only 
with those Poles who were German sub- 
jects, but also with the Russian Poles. In 
circles where only a few weeks before a 
threatening attitude had been adopted 
toward the Poles, one now heard nothing 
but the most frantic praises of this people. 
The long widowhood of the archdiocese of 
Posen-Gnesen, which had become a verit- 
able chronic malady, was terminated with 
surprising promptitude. 2 The problem of 

1 Silesia, Posen, West and East Prussia. 

2 For many years the German Empire refused to 
install at Posen the candidate nominated by the 
Holy See. Berlin wanted to appoint a " German- 
ising " archbishop to this imperfectly subdued 
district. The Holy See, which in such matters puts 
the welfare of the population first, made the " mis- 
take " of recommending for this post a dignitary 
who was too Polish for the German Emperor. Mgr. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 13 

this appointment was solved to the satis- 
faction of all parties by the nomination 
of the venerable Bishop-Coadjutor, Mgr. 
Likowski, since deceased. The severities 
of the anti-Polish colonisation law were 
instantly mitigated, and the priests were 
even permitted to teach the catechism in 
Polish. 

Last July the German mobilisation took 
place, and in August a pamphlet was pub- 
lished in Polish which was intended to 
promote the newly adopted policy. Its 
title is : " The Resurrection of Poland/' and 
it is ^ got up " in a highly artistic manner. 

The first page is devoted to a coloured 
reproduction of the Virgin of Czenstochowa ; 
at her feet kneel a German soldier, a young 
girl, and a couple of aged folk. To the 
right of the Mother of God is displayed 
the portrait of the German Emperor, and 
underneath are these words in Polish : 
" Every Catholic Pole must know that I 
have always respected his religion, and 

Likowski' s successor is the youthful Canon of Posen 
Cathedral, Mgr. Dalbor, known for his openly 
Polish sympathies. 



14 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

that no one will place any obstacle in the 
way of the accomplishment of his religious 
duties " (Address of the Kaiser to the 
Chapter of Gnesen, August 5, 1905). To 
the left of the Madonna is the portrait of 
Leo XIII, with these words, which he 
addressed to the Kaiser in the course of 
an audience : " I promise and assure Your 
Imperial Majesty in the name of all the 
Catholics of the German States and of the 
divers nationalities, that they will always 
be the faithful subjects of the German 
Emperor and the King of Prussia/' 

Certain Polish newspapers believe that 
this pamphlet, in whose publication the 
German authorities had a hand, was packed 
in the knapsack of every German soldier, 
so that he might distribute it to the Polish 
population of Russia. We must not lightly 
reject this statement; for the contents, as 
well as the illustration, lay stress upon the 
passivity of Russia as regards the Poles 
and the Uniats. 

However, all efforts undertaken with a 
view to conciliating the Poles were in vain. 
The past, and the recent anti-Polish cam- 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 15 

paigns in Germany, could not be effaced. 
The Russian Poles made common cause 
with Tsarism, and even formed special 
Polish legions for the protection of the 
Russian Empire. It is said that these 
legions have received large numbers of Polish 
volunteers from America and other parts 
of the world. In an article entitled " The 
Russian Poles and the War" the Kreuz- 
zeitung 1 arrives at the conclusion that 
according to the experiences of these last 
few months " the Russo-Polish item must 
be erased once for all from the credit side 
of the great book of Germany/' Such 
were the results of the anti-Polish campaign 
undertaken by the Pan-Germanists. 
***** 

We must, of course, recognise that the 
German Centre and its Press have played 
no part in this campaign, which is so con- 
trary to the accepted interests of the 
State. In conformity with the traditions 
of Windthorst, the Centre has always 
pronounced in favour of equality of treat- 

1 A Protestant Conservative journal published in 
Berlin. 



16 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

ment for the Poles. Whether, in this 

struggle for Right and Justice, the Centre 

might not have made a more energetic 

use of its Parliamentary influence — then 

very powerful — in favour of this oppressed 

nation, is a question which must be set 

aside. In any case the Press of the Centre, 

even the Press of the Augustinian Union, 1 

has gravely offended against the Catholic 

people of Belgium, and such an attitude 

has caused the most painful feeling among 

Catholics all the world over. To be sure, 

it does seem to-day as though a sort of 

shame and remorse were felt in " Centrist " 

circles in respect of the cruelties committed 

against the Belgians. It is irrefutably 

demonstrated that there was not a single 

organisation of francs-tireurs in all Belgium, 

and, moreover, that no such organisation 

could have been constituted, considering 

the conditions of overwhelming suddenness 

which characterised the German invasion. 

While the German armies were making 
their way into Belgium, fantastic stories, 

1 The Augustinusverband is an organisation of the 
Catholic newspapers of the Centre. See Appendix. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 17 

by means of the Press, were spread abroad 
to the four corners of the Empire : stories 
of gouged-out eyes, bellies cut open, and 
Hussars burned alive. These rumours were 
propagated everywhere, and in this way 
the German people was worked up into a 
dangerous state of excitement. Can you, 
Sir, cite a single case in which these tales 
of brigands, accepted as worthy of credence 
by the uncritical crowd, have been ren- 
dered in some degree credible by statements 
of date and locality, of the name of the 
person responsible, or the pretended victim ? 
Yet the results of this campaign have been 
terrible. 

The past cannot be retrieved : yet it 
will be necessary, as in the case of the 
Poles, to submit to a reconciliation between 
Germany and the other peoples. Many 
injustices have been committed which even 
to-day might be repaired without the 
sacrifice of anything that matters. Would 
not such reparation hasten the advent of 
this reconciliation, and favour the possi- 
bility of such a thing ? 

***** 
c 



18 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

During the month of August thousands 
and thousands of persons belonging to the 
civil population of Belgium were led away 
to captivity in Germany. They are for 
the most part poor peasants and fathers 
of families. For seven months now 1 they 
have been separated from wives and chil- 
dren. In their own country, even where 
the houses have not been burned, the 
poverty is unspeakably great. Spring is 
approaching, and with it the necessity of 
labour in the fields. Nearly all the horses 
have been taken, the cows and bullocks 
requisitioned, so that the teams needful 
for ploughing are almost everywhere lack- 
ing. Even under these mournful circum- 
stances, however, the presence of the father 
and the breadwinner of the family would 
be absolutely indispensable. Ought not 
these poor prisoners at last to be sent to 
their homes? If certain of them should 
be the object of a definite accusation, they 
could be brought before the competent 
tribunal, and, however trivial the offence 
of which they might be found guilty, sub- 
1 Written early in 1915. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 19 

jected to the military laws in all their 
severity. Otherwise let them be sent back 
to their own country. Would it not be 
fitting that the party of the Centre, the 
heirs of von Ketteler, von Mallinkrodt, the 
Reichenspergers, and Windthorst — those 
knights and champions of Right and Jus- 
tice — should intervene in this matter, ap- 
pealing to public opinion as well as to the 
constituted authorities ? 

In place of assuming this duty, which 
is so perfectly in keeping with the glorious 
and time-honoured traditions of the old 
Centre, you, Sir, would heap ruin upon 
ruin, and would even destroy the city of 
London. Do you not see, then, that one 
day the reconciliation between Germany 
and the British Empire will become an 
imperious necessity? Do not forget, as a 
Catholic, and the representative of the 
German Catholics, how hospitably England 
has received, and is still receiving, the 
victims of the German Kulturkampf. 

Among so many examples we will men- 
tion only one : the German Jesuits banished 
from your country have found in the British 



20 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

Empire their widest field of action; they 
administer, with the most fruitful results, 
the arch-diocese of Bombay. The Indian 
Government and its officials have repeat- 
edly figured as the cordial benefactors of 
the German mission. From the consider- 
able payments which England makes him 
for the stipends of military chaplains the 
Archbishop is able to deduct sufficient to 
support more than one poor mission. For 
its schools and charitable institutions the 
Jesuit mission receives generous subven- 
tions from the State. The sons of Hindoo 
princes, by permission of the British 
authorities, are often pupils in the Jesuit 
colleges. When the Archbishop travels 
through his diocese the official train de luxe 
is placed at his disposal. This benevolent 
attitude of the Indian Government, which 
the war has in no wise modified, increases 
the prestige of the German missionaries in 
the eyes of the natives. 

What is true of Bombay is true of all 
parts of the British Empire, which con- 
tains 400,000,000 subjects. Everywhere 
the Catholic Church is accorded the com- 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 21 

pletest liberty. It is free to develop its 
congregational activities, and it is able to 
do something which for the German Catho- 
lics must be an urgent necessity, yet which 
is for the moment entirely outside the 
region of possibilities : it is able to found 
free Catholic educational institutions, from 
the university to the primary school, and 
to count on generous State support. And 
you, Sir, wish to destroy the city of London, 
and if possible the whole British Empire? 
As for Belgium, the country of complete 
religious liberty, where Lazarites, Brothers 
of the Christian Colleges, Ursulines, and 
other German congregations maintain flour- 
ishing educational establishments, which 
are entirely German, though forbidden in 
the German Empire : you want, without 
more ado, to annex Belgium ? But if you 
do so where in future will the victims 
of the German anti-clerical laws find an 
asylum ? 

* * * * * 

As a Catholic — and you still wish to be 
regarded as such, despite the " intercon- 
fessionalism " of your party — it is not fitting 



22 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

that you should stir up popular hatred. 
Of course, I know how widespread this 
hatred has become in Germany to-day, how 
blind and furious it is. Its sinister rumour 
rises up to us from an ocean of newspapers. 
Let us cite one example among a thousand — 

In an article entitled " The German 
Hatred/' published by Pastor Schiller in 
the Vossische Zeitung, 1 we read, after the 
preliminary remark that " the Germans are 
finding themselves obliged, in the course of 
this war of nations, to modify their ideas 
and their methods " — 

" The domain of morality itself is subject 
to this process of evolution. Formerly we 
regarded hatred as immoral. If any one 
referred to the subject we repulsed him 
indignantly, and put him in his place. To- 
day if we know anything at all, it is that 
we may hate, that we ought to hate. 
Lissauer's Hymn of Hate 2 — hatred of Eng- 

1 A Protestant Liberal newspaper, published in 
Berlin. 

2 Here is the best-known verse of the Hymn of 
Hate — 

" For Frenchman or Russian we care not a jot : 
A blow for a blow, a shot for a shot ! 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 28 

land — corresponds absolutely to our feel- 
ings, and the depths of the popular German 
mind. All that may be said to us on this 
subject will fall upon deaf ears, and we 
shall strike away all hands outstretched to 
hold us back. It is not our fault. We 
must hate this lying race." 

When a man who by his vocation is 
required to proclaim the gospel of love and 
pity of our divine Master and Saviour Jesus 
Christ believes himself licensed to express 
himself publicly in this manner, what will 
the disciples of Zarathustra say, who trans- 
mute all values and who would shatter into 
fragments the tables of the old law of love 
and pity, to set up in its place a new ideal 
of conscience, an ideal of pitilessness and 
hardness ? 

At the beginning of the war, when the 
first news of the terrible things that were 

But our hate for you shall ne'er be done ; 
Hate on the sea and hate by land, 
Hate of the brain and hate of the hand, 
We hate as one, we love as one, 
We have one foe and one alone — 
England ! " 



24 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

happening in Belgium was filling the whole 
civilised world with horror, Father Vaughan, 
S.J., brother of the late Cardinal Vaughan, 
Archbishop of Westminster, in a sermon 
delivered in London, attributed the char- 
acteristics of the war as the Germans were 
waging it, as well as their attitude toward 
the civil population of Belgium, to the 
influence of the Nietzschean philosophy. 
The remarks of this famous preacher, 
regarded as the greatest religious orator 
in modern England, provoked the most 
violent contradictions from the Press of 
the German Centre. Incontestably it must 
be granted that the form in which the words 
of the English Jesuit were transmitted to 
Germany was to a great extent deserving 
of the heated denials of the German Press. 
A Catholic, and above all a priest, should 
never, under any circumstances, forget 
that he is required to respect those persons 
who incarnate the sovereignty of the State, 
even if an enemy State be in question. 
Infringements of this precept can only 
envenom the minds of those who regard 
their oath of allegiance as a serious matter, 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 25 

which is essentially the position of the 
German Catholics. As a matter of fact, 
we learned later on that Father Vaughan 
had not uttered the words which were 
attributed to him, and which had been 
rightly censured. But, however this may 
be, there can be no doubt in the matter : 
the philosophy of Nietzsche does exert an 
established influence upon the popular 
German mind, and when, in foreign coun- 
tries, and even in the official publications of 
the French Government, it is asserted that 
the German people has since 1870 under- 
gone so great an intellectual transformation 
that it is almost unrecognisable, this asser- 
tion must be regarded as founded on fact, 
and the reality is to be attributed to the 
influence of Nietzsche. 

Nietzsche, the son of a pastor, who lost 
his mental balance through too deep a study 
of his peculiar subject, has become the 
typical philosopher of modern Germany. 
The intellectual atmosphere of Germany is 
imbued with Nietzschean terms and ideas. 
The spirit of pride inculcated by Nietzsche, 



26 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

together with his " master-morality " and 
his theory of the superman, has, above all, 
pervaded the younger generation. Self- 
consciousness, energy, and absence of 
scruples — this, it appears, is the loftiest 
ideal, and the most recent. This is an 
inevitable result of the diffusion of an 
atheism based on the principles of evolution. 
If it is true that the law of the struggle for 
life operates throughout all Nature, and 
that perfection cannot be attained unless 
the weaker be crushed and annihilated by 
the stronger, why should it not be true of 
men also, and why should not the sole 
moral law be that enunciated by Nietzsche, 
when he celebrates " the boundless will to 
power " ? 

This intellectual evolution has been 
greatly favoured by a universal militarism, 
and by a propaganda of " free-thought," 
superbly organised and widely diffused in 
the German manner. Subterranean at 
first, the activity of the free-thinking and 
" monistic " x circles finally constituted an 



1 Monism is a philosophic theory widely diffused 
in Germany, according to which there exists only one 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 27 

avowed and visible intellectual force 
throughout Germany. The Centre took 
practically no notice of this development. 
No doubt free-thought has displayed 
great activity in the Latin countries also. 
But in these countries it often lacks the 
German solidity. It must also be realised 
that the " free-thought " of the Latin 
countries, unlike the " free-thought " of 
Germany, adopted anti-militarism and 
international pacifism as its basis, so that 
in France the war has destroyed much of 
its credit. German free-thought, on the 
other hand, is saturated with Nietzschism, 
and has placed itself at the service of Pan- 
Germanism; its ideal is Germanic neo- 
Paganism, and its cult a national Pan- 
German idolatry. This essential contrast 
enables us to understand the bitter hostility 
which the free-thought and freemasonry of 

substance, whence everything is derived— all matter, 
all thought, etc. Haeckel, who signed the mani- 
festo of the " Ninety-three," and is well known to 
have falsified photographic documents in the interest 
of his doctrines, is the most celebrated representative 
of this school, which is in some respects a renewal of 
Pantheism. 



28 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

the Latin countries, and above all of Italy, 
entertain toward Germany. 

For reasons of opportunism, Pan-German- 
ism has in many instances preserved the 
old traditional Christian formulae. In con- 
formity with the teaching of Nietzsche, the 
audacious transmuter of all accepted ideas, 
a new Pagan meaning has been infused 
into these Christian formulae. In this way 
free-thought itself has retained the war- 
cry inherited from Gustavus Adolphus : 
Gott mit uns. The reader will the better 
understand the manner in which Nietz- 
schean free-thought effects the transmuta- 
tion of this pious Christian watchword by 
reading the following poem, which has 
enjoyed a large circulation in Germany — 

The German God 

The foes of Germany, full of irony, inquire : 

" You Germans call upon God, and pray to Him 

To aid you in the battle. 

So you have a God of your own, 

Whom we know not, 

A God on your side? " 

" Yes," cries all Germany, " and if you know him 

not 
We shall tell you his name. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 29 

The God who speaks through our guns, 

The God who shatters your fortresses, 

Who roars in the sea by our cliffs, 

Who hovers in the heavens with our aeroplanes, 

The God of our swords, who fills you with affright, 

He is the same Almighty Spirit 

Who through the centuries 

Has hovered over Germany, 

Who weaves and mixes all our lives, 

And on whom we depend. 

" Odin, the ancient vagabond of the clouds, 

The Odin of our fathers, it is He and no other. 

In His name did Walter * sing, 

In His name did Martin Luther battle, 

The God who with us endured poverty, 

Yet who in the gloom remained keen and radiant 

In Paul Gerhart and Johann Sebastian Bach, 

The God with whom Frederick lay down on the 

field of battle, 
And who, in the end, brought us the new day; 
Who sent upon our land 
The Dawn : 
Lessing and Kant, 

Until the sun rose in the firmament : 
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, 
And all the spirits, 
Immortal masters, 
About him ! 

1 Walter von der Vogelweide, died 1228, the famous 
German minnesinger. A Pan-Germanist before his 
time, and highly appreciative of the things of this 
world, he also sang with tenderness of the Virgin 
Mother and her sorrows. 



30 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

All this was of Him, 

The God to whom we cry to-day, 

Who feeds with a sacred fire 

The holy spirit of Germany, 

It is He whom we must confess." 

Will Vesper. 



German free-thinkers even go to the 
length of maintaining that the Nietz- 
schean spirit has assumed the leadership of 
the German people in this great war, and 
the Zeitgeist, the organ of the German 
Monistic Union, expressed itself as follows 
quite at the beginning of hostilities — 

" The men who to-day are fighting like 
lions and sacrificing themselves like heroes, 
who, with empty stomachs, like martyrs or 
ascetics, go to the front impelled by a 
secret will, throwing themselves into the 
arms of death and mutilation, and those 
too who, at home, silently and modestly, 
undertake with gladness a tenfold labour — 
all these millions of men of the old German 
rock, strong, tenacious, with an iron sense 
of duty, are nourished by this intellectual 
bread : the conceptions of Nietzsche/' In 
Nietzsche the Zeitgeist sees the man whose 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 31 

seed is springing up in magnificence, for 
" he has shown us that earthliness, 1 love 
of self, cruelty, and hardness are precious 
auxiliaries of culture ; he has rid us of the 
spirit of other-worldliness, of altruism and 
humility/ ' 

Where, in the philosophy of Nietzsche, 
are we to find a barrier to oppose to no 
matter what aberration or violence, if 
good and evil are only obsolete opinions, 
concomitants of the moment's profit or 
loss, and if, as Nietzsche says, " all these 
pallid atheists, anti-Christians, immoralists, 
nihilists, sceptics, ephectics and hectics " 
are not of themselves ready to become 
" free spirits " ; if the true and ideal free- 
dom of the spirit resides in the motto of the 

1 Leiblichkeit. It is one of those terms of the 
Nietzschean vocabulary which are not very easy to 
translate. It means, alternatively, or simultaneously, 
if one may say so, corftorality, terrestriality. Roughly 
speaking, it signifies the quality of something that is 
real, close at hand, tangible, as opposed to something 
remote and immaterial ; for instance, the body and 
the earth as opposed to the soul and the heavens. 
It implies an impassioned submission and adhesion 
to the domination and the brutal powers of nature, 
as opposed to the Christian ideal of renunciation. 



32 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

assassins: " Nothing is true; all things 
are permitted ! " 

Is it astonishing, then, that men nour- 
ished on the moral bread of the Nietzschean 
ideal, as the Zeitgeist has it, should leave 
behind them nothing but corpses and ruins, 
when they cross the frontiers of their country, 
to fall upon a people in no way prepared 
for war, almost without weapons, which is 
quite unexpectedly pointed out to them as 
their enemy? 

You will doubtless object, with good 
reason, that a large section of the German 
people, and above all the Catholics, have 
hitherto been preserved from any direct 
infection of Nietzschean philosophy, and 
that they have remained faithful to the 
Christian creed of their fathers. This is 
perfectly true, and all the countries occupied 
by the German troops will confirm the fact. 

We, too, in Luxembourg have witnessed 
the solid, manly piety of the Catholic 
German soldiers, and we have often found 
this piety instructive. But you will admit 
that the trend of the German people does 
not depend on those brave Catholic soldiers 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 33 

who piously recite their rosary in the 
trenches, nor on those who, exposed to the 
constant peril of death, hold fast to a 
loftier ideal of love for God and man, and 
" always, always read in the old sacred Book 
how the Lord has shown Himself faithful, 
and how He has loved us/' 1 

So the assertion of the Zeitgeist with 
regard to the conduct of the war by 
Nietzsche appears, as a matter of fact, the 
most probable. The mentality of the culti- 
vated circles and the ruling circles in modern 
Germany has turned neither to Catholicism 
nor to a religion subjected to ecclesiastical 
discipline. One might go on speaking for 
ever of the backward position of the German 
Catholics in public life. The political 
representation of the German Catholics may 
well perform the collar-work in dragging the 
chariot of Empire, especially when the 
road is steep and rugged, but the Nation- 
alist and interconfessionalist Centre is not 
allowed to seat itself therein. 2 I refuse to 
enter any further into this question, and 

1 Passage from a German hymn. 

2 See Appendix. 



34 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

will content myself with referring to those 
numerous writings which are full of lamenta- 
tions on the subject of ' ' equality /'especially 
those of Hans Rost and Bachem. 

Most lamentable of all is the spirit of 
servility by which the Centre has debased 
itself, as a result of the ineffectual position 
to which it has for some generations been 
condemned. This frame of mind, which is 
utterly incomprehensible to the foreigner, 
is so firmly established that Professor 
Martin Spahn, at the spectacle of " the 
might of German life, which derives its 
energies from the past," and of that Ost- 
Elbiertum * " which, with imposing strength, 
offers an increasing opposition, as of a 
breakwater, to the waves of Radicalism, " 
falls into an ecstasy so amazing that like 
St. Peter of old upon Mount Tabor he seems 
totally oblivious of the existence and the 
merits of the Centre, which is his own 
party. 2 For the rest, even if the political 

1 The party of the junkers, or landowners, of the 
country to the east of the Elbe. 

2 Concerning the tendencies of Herr Spahn before 
and during the war, see Appendix. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 85 

representatives of the German Catholics 
were granted the position which is rightfully 
theirs, the influence of Nietzsche's philo- 
sophy upon the conduct of the war would 
encounter little or no opposition. 

Practically there is hardly any difference 
between your manner of conceiving the 
conduct of hostilities and that of the 
Nietzschean doctrine, with its " master- 
morality/ ' and its theory of the superman. 

In No. 30 of Der Tag, 1913, you express 
yourself thus : "In warfare the greatest 
absence of scruples, if one sets about the 
matter intelligently, coincides, in reality, 
with the greatest humanity. 1 When we 
are in a position to wipe out London by a 
method in our possession, it is more humane 
to do so than to allow a single one of our 
German comrades to shed his blood on the 
field of battle, for so radical a cure would 
bring about peace as quickly as possible. 
Hesitation, temporising, sentimentality and 
consideration are unpardonable weaknesses. 

1 This axiom of Lieber's, cited by von Hartmann, 
is repeated by every German as though it were his 
own. It dates, apparently, from 1870-76. — B.M. 



36 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

A decided, unscrupulous action — a display 
of efficacy, and victory follows/* 

How can you conciliate this declaration 
with the strict instructions which have 
been given us by Benedict XV, notably in 
the first consistorial address of January 22, 
which the Centre, for that matter, passed 
over in all but absolute silence ? 

In this address Benedict XV laid down, 
very clearly and unequivocally, the prin- 
ciples which guide and unite all Catholics — 

" It is never permissible, for any reason 
whatever, to violate justice." 

The Pope " condemns all injustice, on 
whichever side it may be practised/ ' This 
declaration of Benedict XV's ought to 
appear superfluous, for the principle re- 
called by the Holy Father is so obviously 
true that there could hardly be found one 
Catholic in all the world who would deny 
its justice and its obligatory character. 

Yet it is this very obviousness which 
makes it clear with what intention the Pope 
considered it necessary to recall, so seri- 
ously, with such solemnity, a precept so 
simple — one might say so commonplace. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 87 

He wished to reject and condemn the 
interested sophistries by which certain 
persons had attempted to obscure this 
inconvenient truth. 

Let us compare the pontifical address 
with the well-known declaration made by 
Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg in the 
Reichstag on August 4, 1914. Here it is, 
word for word — 

" Gentlemen, we are confronted by a 
necessity, and necessity knows no law. 
Our troops have occupied Luxembourg, 
and have, perhaps, already entered Bel- 
gium. Gentlemen, this is contrary to 
international law. The French Govern- 
ment, it is true, declared to Brussels that 
it would respect the neutrality of Belgium 
so long as the enemy should do so. We 
know, however, that France was ready for 
aggression. France could wait; we could 
not. A French attack upon our flank on 
the Lower Rhine might have been fatal to 
us. Thus we have been compelled to over- 
ride the justifiable protests of Luxembourg 
and the Belgian Government. 

" For the offence — I speak plainly — for 



38 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

the offence which we are thereby committing 
against them we shall indemnify them as 
soon as our military object is attained/ ' 

It remains to be proved that Germany, 
the only country completely prepared for 
war, and the first, moreover, to declare war, 
was confronted by any necessity. In any 
case, one thing will be energetically denied 
here in Luxembourg : namely, that the 
French Army was the first to violate our 
neutrality and to precipitate hostilities. 

On the morning of August 3 a proclama- 
tion from the German military authorities 
to the people of Luxembourg was posted 
up in the city of Luxembourg by the in- 
vading German troops. Here is the text 
of this proclamation — 

" All the steps taken to preserve peace 
by His Majesty the Emperor and King 
have been in vain. The enemy has forced 
Germany to draw the sword. France 
having commenced hostilities against the 
German Army on the Luxembourg soil, 
despite the neutrality of Luxembourg, His 
Majesty finds himself constrained by the 
most pressing emergency to the painful 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 39 

necessity of ordering the German Army, 

and in especial the Eighth Army Corps, to 

occupy Luxembourg/ ' 

The information which gave occasion 

for this proclamation was false. The entire 

population of Luxembourg is witness to 

this fact. 

***** 

However this may be, the violation of 
the neutrality of Belgium and Luxembourg 
is, as the Chancellor of the Empire admitted, 
a patent infringement of treaties and a 
crying injustice. Consequently it should 
not under any pretext have been allowed 
to occur. 

" It is never permissible, for any reason 
whatsoever, to violate justice." In these 
words does the Pope reject the aphorism of 
the Chancellor : " Necessity knows no law." 

Necessity may well absolve a man from 
the observance of positive laws, in propor- 
tion as he is subject to an external and 
irresistible constraint. But he may never, 
under any circumstances, violate justice 
itself. You and your party should never 
have lost sight of this principle. 



40 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

Do not argue that reasons of State, or 
State interests, can give a character of 
necessity to the perpetration of injustice. 
This is not a Christian principle; it is 
utterly Pagan. In all times men have 
appealed to it in order to legitimise the 
most arbitrary atrocities and acts of vio- 
lence : notably the persecution of Christi- 
anity. At the time of the Kulturkampf the 
Centre fought most courageously and with 
the greatest energy against the Pagan 
principle that reasons of State legitimise 
everything. There is not one moral code 
for States and one for individuals. It is 
never, under any circumstances, permis- 
sible to commit an evil, criminal action 
which is forbidden by natural law. This 
command applies to the State also, no 
matter what advantage the community 
might derive from its violation. 

Catholic as I am, I may well remind you 
that the contrary view was expressly con- 
demned, long before the days of Benedict 
XV, by the Syllabus of Pius IX, of which 
the 64th proposition reads as follows — 

" The violation of an oath, however 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 41 

sacred it may be (the neutrality of Belgium 
and Luxembourg was guaranteed by the 
oath of the head of the State, and also by 
the King of Prussia), and any action con- 
trary to the eternal law of God, are not 
always blameworthy. On the contrary, 
they are permissible and even praiseworthy 
when their motive is love of country/ ' 1 

The infallible authority of the Church 
has solemnly condemned this doctrine by 
the mouth of His Holiness Pius IX. 

I can very well understand that non- 
Catholics do not regard this doctrinal 
decision as obligatory, and that in public 
and political life they admit no other moral 
prescription than reasons of State, as they 
are called. Perhaps I do not blame them. 
But you, Sir, and with you all the party 

1 Here is the Latin text of this proposition, inserted 
in the Syllabus : it is extracted from the consistorial 
address pronounced by Pius IX on April 20, 1849 — 

" Turn cuj usque sanctissimi juramenti violatio, turn 
quaelibet scelesta flagitiosaque actio sempiternae legi 
repugnans non solum haud est improbanda, verum 
etiam omnino licita summisque laudibus efferenda, 
quando id pro amore patriae agatur." (See B. 
Gandeau, Le danger pour VEglise est en Allemagne, in 
La Foi Catholique, April-May 1915. ) 



42 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

of the Centre, the Catholic representatives 
of the German people — how could you, at 
a moment of the world's history so decisive 
for the future of Germany and Europe, 
neglect, without more ado, the doctrinal 
decisions of the Church, to give your un- 
reserved approval to a principle so lament- 
able and so heathenish as the above? 
Must we regard this as one more result of 
that interconfessionalism which believes 
that " in its political, social, and cultural 
activities the Centre need not be inspired 
by the principles of Catholic teaching? " 
This essential question cropped up last 
year, in November, while the Reichstag 
was sitting. The spokesman of Social 
Democracy profited by the occasion to 
formulate the precise reservations with 
which his party regarded the question of 
equity and justice where neutrals were con- 
cerned. The Centre, as far as I know, 
made no reference to the subject. 

Of course, no one could expect that the 
Centre and the German Catholics would 
allow themselves, on the occasion of this 
violent crisis, which had occurred so sud- 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 43 

denly, to be outdone in patriotism, heroism, 
disinterestedness, and war-like spirit even, 
by any other party whatsoever, or any other 
section of the nation. Nevertheless, the 
Centre under any circumstances ought to 
have preserved intact the equitable point of 
view. The words of the Bible remain 
eternally true : Justitia firmatur solium. It 
is Justice which upholds the throne (Prov. 
xvi. 12), and Germany, too, may avail herself 
of the traditional motto of the Emperor of 
Austria : Justitia regnorum fundamentum. 

The ideas which you uphold are in yet 
another way, and on a very essential point, 
directly in contradiction to the solemn 
instructions of the Holy Father. You 
would have it that the conduct of hos- 
tilities abroad should be effected with as 
few mitigations as possible, and with the 
greatest possible severity, and you go so 
far as to speak of the destruction of entire 
cities. Benedict XV, on the contrary, in 
his consistorial address, prays and adjures 
belligerents who have crossed their own 
frontier to spare the civil population alto- 
gether, 



44 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

" It is to be feared/' he says, " that the 
violence of attack often exceeds all measure. 
We here appeal to the sense of humanity 
of those who have crossed the frontiers of 
enemy nations, to conjure them that the 
invaded regions shall not be devastated 
further than is strictly demanded by the 
necessities of military occupation, and, 
what is even more important, that the 
inhabitants shall not, without actual neces- 
sity, be offended in respect of that which 
they hold most dear, as their temples of 
religion, the ministers of God, and the 
rights of religion and of faith." 1 

It is indubitable that the fears expressed 
by the Pope, and his prayers and adjura- 
tions, refer directly to Belgium, and the 
deplorable circumstances which accom- 
panied the German invasion, together with 
the misfortunes which have in so brief a 
space befallen a country lately so flourishing. 

Even though the Holy Father has not 
expressly said as much, every one must 

1 From the French translation published in La 
Croix, January 25, 1915, which gives the whole 
address. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 45 

recognise that " the violence of the attack 
upon the Belgian people has exceeded all 
measure/' and that " the occupied regions 
have been devastated to a greater extent 
than was demanded by the necessities of 
military occupation/' 

However, Benedict XV did not intend 
that there should be any doubt as to what 
he really did wish to say in his solemn and 
paternal instructions : he expressly declared 
in his speech that in this connection " his 
solicitude was in the first place for Bel- 
gium/' and that " his thoughts lingered 
with the most profound tenderness about 
his well-beloved Belgian people." He refers 
here to his letter to Cardinal Mercier, a 
letter which reached its destination only 
with the greatest difficulty, and in which 
the Pope himself draws a heartbreaking 
picture of the suffering of the Belgian 
people. 

It is of the utmost urgency that the 
German Catholics should once for all take 
up a definite position as regards this terrible 
matter of the German hostilities in Belgium, 
and their consequences. You, Sir, uphold 



46 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

the idea, which before the war was diffused 
by the Pan-Germanist Press, and is to-day 
almost universally adopted, that the econo- 
mic, political and national evolution of 
Germany demands the annexation of 
Belgium to the Empire. 

Abroad, to-day, Germany is often enough 
accused of having undertaken the present 
war merely in order to extend her western 
frontier to the sea by the acquisition of 
Belgium. Your statements in the Press 
lend at least an aspect of probability to 
this serious accusation. 

The eventual fate of our common neigh- 
bour, like our own, is as yet hidden in the 
future. In any case, above all if the destiny 
of the neutral countries is to follow the 
course which your ideas and your desires 
would indicate, the reconciliation of the 
Belgian people with the German will be- 
come an imperious necessity, particularly 
for Germany herself. 

***** 

The German Catholics are precisely those 
who would have been best qualified to 
work for a reconciliation of this kind, if 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 47 

they could have agreed, or even if they 
could to-day agree, to respect and consider 
the legitimate feelings of their Belgian 
co-religionists. How bitter the feelings of 
the Belgians are to-day is shown in a 
striking fashion by the Lent mandamus of 
the Bishop of Namur, Mgr. Heylen — 

' That many souls, in the midst of the 
terrible sufferings which are oppressing 
them, are experiencing cruel temptations, 
we were able everywhere to perceive for 
ourselves, in the course of our visit to the 
devastated communes. On all sides people 
complained to us : ' Why should it be 
Belgium in particular that is so cruelly 
ravaged, so mortally wounded? Is this 
the reward for our always unshaken attach- 
ment to the Catholic faith, for all the 
sacrifices we have made for works of piety 
and charity, for our fidelity to the Apostolic 
Holy See, for our ever-cordial hospitality 
to the priests and religious exiled from 
Germany no less than from France ? What 
has it profited us that we have almost 
exhausted our energies in founding innumer- 
able establishments which afford a purely 



48 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

Catholic instruction and education, that 
we have consecrated our sons, as freely 
as, and relatively speaking more freely 
than any other people, to the propagation 
of faith among the heathen ? ' They said, 
again : ' Our priests are massacred or sub- 
jected to terrible outrages; our churches 
are destroyed or used for secular purposes ; 
our goods have become the prey of war 
more frequently and in greater measure 
than have the goods of the wicked. Why 
these hard trials? How can the just God 
permit them ? ■ And then, often enough, a 
murmur escapes from their lips, even an 
involuntary accusation against the Deity/ ' 1 

To this description of the feelings of 
his diocesans, Mgr. Heylen added paternal 
counsels of patience and fidelity, as Cardinal 
Mercier had already done, when, in his 
mandamus, which is to-day a historic docu- 
ment, he reminded the Belgian people in 
such touching phrases of the example of 
Job and his pious resignation. 

1 The authentic text of this mandamus not having 
entered France, the above is translated from the 
French translation of the German version. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 49 

If, according to the testimony of their 
bishops, many feeble souls in Belgium 
to-day are tempted even to be unfaithful 
to their God, what feelings must they not 
entertain toward Germany? And it is 
these seven and a half millions of human 
beings, full of such thoughts, that you wish, 
without more ado, to include among the 
subjects of the Empire? Will you not at 
least recognise that it is absolutely necessary 
that the German Catholics should at last 
reflect upon their duty toward this people, 
so cruelly trampled underfoot, and that 
they at least should intervene, with all the 
influence that is theirs, in order that this 
people shall not be even further trampled 
upon? 

Have you, then, not heard the voice of 
the common Father of Christendom; not 
heard his touching prayer " that disunion 
may disappear from among men," and his 
bitter complaint that " the present hour 
so cruelly oppresses him, with its unjust 
hatred and its terrible streams of blood? " 



I beg you, Sir, not to address to me the 

E 



50 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

statement so often made in Germany — 
namely, that the whole responsibility for 
the lamentable happenings in Belgium rests 
upon " the mischievous decisions of her 
Government." 

" Belgium/ ' it is maintained in the 
German Press, " should have behaved as did 
Luxembourg, and left a free passage for our 
troops marching against France ; she would 
have been spared all this devastation/' 

In the first place it must be remembered 
that the attitude of Belgium differed from 
that of Luxembourg only because Germany 
treated the two countries differently. 
Luxembourg was occupied at one stroke, 
without previous warning, by the German 
troops. If Germany had demanded that 
Luxembourg should consent to the viola- 
tion of her neutrality, there is not the 
slightest doubt that the Luxembourg 
Government would have met this demand 
by the same negative reply as was received 
from Belgium. You cannot, Sir, regard the 
Grand Duchess as unfaithful to her oath 
and her sworn fealty. 

Moreover, where Belgium is concerned 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 51 

we must distinguish between an invasion 
(Einmarsch) of German troops for the pur- 
pose of occupying and conquering the 
country and their simple passage (Durch- 
marsch) toward France. In principle, either 
one or the other ought to be opposed. But 
it was strategically impossible for Belgium 
to oppose a simple passage, and, as a matter 
of fact, despite its protest, offered as a 
matter of principle, the Belgian Govern- 
ment did not oppose the passage pure and 
simple. 

France, as we know, forms the southern 
frontier of Belgium, and is divided from 
Germany by the Belgian province of Luxem- 
bourg and the Grand Duchy. At the 
beginning of the war this province was 
totally undefended by Belgian troops. On 
the whole of the Belgian-German frontier, 
a distance of ninety-three miles, from 
Herbesthal to Arlon, there was not — apart 
from the usual guard-houses of the gen- 
darmerie — a single Belgian soldier. So that 
Germany could very easily, and without 
shedding a drop of blood, have effected 
her passage into France. 



52 PAN-GERMANISM v, CHRISTENDOM 

But this was not what happened. On 
August 4 the German troops invaded 
Belgium, and they assuredly did not in- 
vade the country in the direction of the 
French frontier. They entered Belgium 
at the other extremity of the country, at 
Vise, quite close to the Dutch frontier, 
that is, the northern frontier. It was 
not until August 12, eight days later, 
that the Arlon district, the southern portion 
of the Province of Luxembourg, and the 
key of the French frontier, was occupied. 
It was not the passage but the invasion of 
the German troops which Belgium opposed, 
because this invasion must necessarily have 
led, and in the sequel did lead, to the com- 
plete conquest of the country. 

However, the most urgent strategic neces- 
sity, whether of a passage through the 
country or of an invasion, could not have 
justified the character of the hostilities 
which took place in Belgium. " The vio- 
lence of the attack/' in the words of 
Benedict XV, " surpassed all measure/ ' 
There is no doubt on that point ; and " those 
who crossed the frontier of their own terri- 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 53 

tory devastated the invaded regions more 
than was required by the necessities of 
military occupation/ ' 

The a priori denials of the German " in- 
tellectuals/ ' formerly so proud of their 
professed freedom from prejudice, have, in 
this connection, entirely failed in their 
object, for we are concerned here with 
perfectly definite facts, witnessed by millions 
of persons, established by a special Com- 
mission of Inquiry composed of jurists, 
and denounced, in an irrefutable fashion, 
by overwhelming proofs, to the entire 
civilised world. Neither are we dealing 
with habitual disorders, such as occur in 
every war, and are almost inevitable, but, 
to quote the expressions employed by 
Mgr. Heylen in his mandamus, with calami- 
ties unexampled in the history of Belgium, 
although that history has in the past 
centuries been sufficiently disturbed. Yes, 
and one might add : unexampled in the 
history of humanity. In the past, it is 
true, whole countries have been devastated, 
and during the Thirty Years' War the 
sinister Christian de Halberstadt recruited 



54 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

in his army a corps of incendiaries (brand- 
meister). But the incendiary bands of the 
condottieri of the seventeenth century had 
not at their disposal the technical methods 
which modern times have placed in the 
hands of the destroyers. 

* * * * * 

It will hardly serve the cause of national 
reconciliation so ardently desired by Bene- 
dict XV to deprive the German people, by 
means of the Press, of an exact knowledge 
of the real situation ; or, on the other hand, 
to call their attention complacently, and 
even to satiety, in illustrated periodicals 
and periodicals without illustrations, to 
trumpery anecdotes of heroes of the land- 
sturm who offer slices of bread to little 
Belgian mendicants. Stories of this kind 
can only arouse resentment. You have 
doubtless heard, on the evenings of the 
Holy Week, in the twilight of our churches, 
the liturgical chants in which the prophet 
Jeremiah makes lamentation. What a 
striking description he gives us, in the 
picturesque language of the East, of the 
sufferings and the abasement of his people 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 55 

in the days of the Babylonian captivity ! 
Yet even in Jeremiah you will seek in vain 
for a picture so sadly humiliating as that 
of a poor little child, tortured by hunger, 
going to beg a morsel of bread at the 
hands of the foreign conqueror ! 

I refuse to consider any further the 
frightful atrocities which occurred in Bel- 
gium during the month of August. I will 
content myself with citing a few brief 
extracts from the statement made by 
Mgr. Heylen in his Lent mandamus. This 
mandamus does not refer to the whole of 
Belgium, but only to the diocese of Namur. 

In the course of his letter the Bishop 
solemnly protests that it was by no means 
his wish to encourage in his diocesans any 
ideas of revolt against the existing authori- 
ties, nor even feelings of discouragement. 
He wished merely to open his suffering 
heart to the hearts of his children, that 
he might thereby afford himself and them 
some consolation. 

He wished also to draw their attention 
to the temptations which would attack 



56 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

them by reason of the excess of their woes, 
and to teach them in what fashion they 
should accept these trials, in order to make 
them work for the salvation of their souls. 
In touching phrases the Bishop speaks in 
memory of the twenty-five priests and brothers 
of his diocese, who, during the happenings 
of August, had lost their lives, without 
offence on their side, and of others, far 
more numerous, who were maltreated and 
martyred in all sorts of ways. Mgr. Heylen 
also gives full vent to his sorrow in respect 
of the thousands on thousands of civilians of 
his diocese who were cruelly massacred, 
without his being able to discover whether 
in even one single case the guilt of the 
persons executed was irrefutably proved. 

And he adds — 

" The sorrow of all those who have to 
deplore the death of a father, a son, a 
brother or a friend touches us closely. 
Above all, we partake of the sorrow of all 
those parishes so cruelly tried in which 
one now encounters only orphans and 
widows, and which are bemoaning the fate 
of those families which have completely 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 57 

disappeared from among the living, to the 
last heir of their race. . . . What can we 
say now of the material ruins which have 
in so brief a space of days accumulated 
in so many different parts of our diocese ? 
We have personally passed through the 
devastated regions, and everywhere we have 
shed bitter tears at the spectacle of the 
ruins of so many churches, schools, 
presbyteries and dwelling-houses, which 
were destroyed, in some cases, as the 
result of a battle, but most frequently by 
incendiarism. 

" Shall we mention the names of locali- 
ties ? Dinant, Tamines, Saint-Martin, 
Sorinne, Spontin, Hastiere, Hermeton, On- 
haye, Anthee, Maurenne, Suria, Romedenne, 
Franchimont, Villers-en-Fagne, Frasnes, 
Willerzie, Bourseigne, Musson, Buranzy, 
Ethe, Gomery, Tintigny, Houdemont, Ros- 
signol, Herbeumont, Maissin, Porcheresse — 
all these parishes are completely erased 
from the map of the diocese. In addition 
to these places, which have disappeared 
from the surface of the earth, there are 
one hundred and fifty more in which the 



58 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

work of destruction has been more or less 
incomplete/ ' l 

In his address of January 22 Bene- 
dict XV adjured the belligerents in the 
most pressing fashion " to spare more 
especially the houses of the Lord and the 
servitors of His altars/' Ah, well, the cases 
of sacrilege committed all over Belgium 
during the month of August were so atro- 
cious that the pen of a Catholic shrinks 
from describing them. 

Here, as Mgr. Heylen says — 

" A thing that profoundly and quite 
especially afflicts our heart is the thought 
of the horrible acts of sacrilege of which 
different parts of our diocese have been 
the theatre. We deplore them from the 
bottom of our heart, because they directly 
strike at our Divine Master in the Most 
Holy Sacrament of the altar, whose cult we 
have made such efforts to diffuse through- 
out our diocese. You will recall all those 

1 We believe the text of Mgr. Heylen's letter has 
never reached France or England ; at all events, we 
were unable to discover it, so that the above version 
is re-translated from the German. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 59 

majestic manifestations of faith in which 
we lately glorified the Lord in His Sacra- 
ment at the time of our local Eucharistic 
Congresses. For this reason you will the 
better comprehend all the bitterness of the 
outrages which our Saviour has had to 
endure. But assuredly we know that judg- 
ment and condemnation appertain to the 
Lord alone, and we beg the Eternal Judge 
to bestow his pardon upon the guilty." 

This prelate, to whom the management 

of the International Eucharistic Congresses 

owes so much, is entirely in the right when 

he leaves the Lord to judge the acts of 

sacrilege which have been committed. But 

this is one reason the more why the German 

Catholics should refuse all responsibility 

for such crimes. It is the same in all 

that concerns the assassinations of priests ; 

assassinations without excuse, as their 

Bishops and the entire Belgian people bear 

witness. Here we must have the matter 

made absolutely clear, and the question of 

sanction or assent must not be forgotten. 

This affects the most precious possession of 

the German people— religious peace, com- 



60 PAN-GERMANISM p. CHRISTENDOM 

promised by a campaign of accusations, 
whose falsity can be proved, against the 
Belgian people; it affects the honour of 
the German people and the moral founda- 
tions of the Empire. You will yourself, 
Sir, admit that Germany cannot be blest 
and prosperous when the German Catholics 
themselves refuse to look into this question 
and expressly decline all responsibility for 
the acts of sacrilege committed, and the 
assassinations of priests ; when, even in the 
face of the innumerable victims of Nietz- 
schean super-humanity and the furor pro- 
testanticus they emit, in chorus, this horrible 
cry : " May their blood be upon us and 
upon our children ! " 

When, at the beginning of the war, and 
in spite of the intellectual claustration to 
which we in Luxembourg were so long con- 
demned, the news of what was happening 
in Pelgium, at our very gates, found its 
way to us, and day by day still further 
acquired the character of absolute cer- 
tainty, we asked ourselves in amazement 
how such atrocities were possible in the 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 61 

twentieth century, and on the part of the 
German people, a nation so proud of its 
culture. Only to-day can we give the key 
to this enigma, which then appeared un- 
decipherable. We must seek the solution 
in the frantic campaign, of which history 
affords us no other example, which the 
German Press has waged against the Belgian 
people. In this campaign the Catholic 
"religious " journals have quite peculiarly 
distinguished themselves. Examine, for ex- 
ample, the back numbers of Leo, " a Sun- 
day newspaper for the German People," 
published by the Bonifazius-Gesellschaft 1 
of Paderborn, which has, in Westphalia, a 
circulation of over 100,000. What is re- 
lated here of Belgian francs-tireurs, stories 
not one of which is based on the truth, and 
of which not one could be proved, verges 
on the incredible. 2 

1 This is no doubt connected with the Bonifazius- 
verein, associations created by German Catholics to 
maintain or diffuse the Catholic faith in Protestant 
regions of the Empire. 

2 During the past year it has happened that the 
present translator has had to translate scores of 
these legends, and the same legend has turned up 



62 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

Even before the war (we are told) the 
Belgians were committing the most terrible 

repeatedly in different quarters, sometimes over a 
different signature. Most notable of all is a totally 
imaginary account of the destruction of a Jesuit 
convent of silent monks, which stood without the 
walls of Liege, by Belgian peasants, while a Zeppelin 
bombarded the forts; the monks being eventually 
rescued by German soldiers. Now there never was 
a Jesuit convent outside Liege ; Jesuits take no vow 
of silence ; and no dirigible had flown over Liege at 
the date mentioned. Each time the translator has 
met with this legend it has appeared over a different 
signature. 

Descriptions (in soldiers' letters) of forcing the 
gates of Liege with great slaughter, under the fire 
of francs-tireurs and Frenchmen hidden in the houses, 
were very popular. Now Liege is an open town. 
Von Emmich entered it without firing a shot, behind 
a crowd of starving, fainting, terrified hostages, whom 
the gallant commander drove across the bridge to 
make sure that it was not mined. 

A German captain, instructed to search for arms, 
stated that almost every house in Belgium had been 
loopholed for rifle fire — proving that Belgium had 
prepared for the war (and had known, one supposes, 
that she would be attacked !). These loopholes were 
most cunningly dissimulated behind decorative bosses 
or ironwork. The explanation is simple. In Belgium 
light scaffoldings — such as house-painters and window- 
cleaners might use — are not built up from the ground, 
but suspended from iron bars, which are thrust (from 
the loft of the house) through iron tubes, which run 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 63 

crimes against the Germans. For instance, 
this publication, designed for the edification 
of the German people, announces in its 
issue for the 12th Sunday after Pentecost 
that before the war five Germans were 
wounded in Belgium (so there were wounded 
before there was fighting), pierced with 
blows from carving-knives, and blinded 

through the walls just over or under the eaves. The 
outer ends of these tubes are closed by carved or 
wrought caps or finials. The captain might have 
added that the preparations for war had been going 
on for several centuries, and that the rifles could only 
have been aimed at the roofs of the opposite houses ! 
What is most characteristic of all these legends is 
the slavish lack of originality betrayed. Eyes of 
wounded men are gouged out — always by young 
girls, who use corkscrews for the purpose ! Women 
pour burning paraffin over soldiers (paraffin does not 
burn). Children (or wounded men) are thrown 
naked from third-storey windows. Similarly, when 
Herr Erzberger says, " The war which is conducted 
with severity is the most humane war," and that 
this or the other crime is preferable to the death of 
one German soldier, he is merely echoing, like a 
parrot, as almost every German general has done, a 
proposition of Lieber's, which he possibly repeated 
after some other military writer. A year's work 
upon such documents leaves an impression of in- 
sensate egoism, parrot-like or simian imitativeness, 
and complete mental servility. — B.M. 



64 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

with rifle-bullets; a German butcher in 
Brussels was said to have been decapitated 
and cut into pieces ; while another, a shop- 
keeper, was quartered alive. 1 Of course 
these tales of brigands are terminated by 
threats : Belgium shall pay dearly for such 
atrocities ! 

In its thirty-second number this " im- 
proving publication " goes to the length 
of an almost direct provocation to assas- 
sinate foreign princes. On page 330 we 
read — 

" How many times has not the Catholic 
Church been wrongly accused of permitting 
tyrannicide ! To-day every one is obsessed 
by the same question : Would it not have 
been better to hang to the nearest tree 
half-a-dozen of the authors of this war, 
chosen from among the Russian Grand 
Dukes ?" 

When such language is possible in a 
Sunday newspaper intended for the good 
and worthy peasants of Westphalia, what 
are we to expect from the spiteful publica- 

1 Both men were alive and well a few months 
ago.— B.M. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 65 

tions of the anti-Catholics and anti- 
clericals? It goes without saying that in 
all these tales of francs-tireurs priests or 
monks always play the leading part. The 
frenzy of the German Evangelicals reached 
such a pitch that the Ordinary of the 
Bishopric of Hildesheim was forced offici- 
ally to declare that the Catholic workers, 
in the purely Protestant or the bi-con- 
fessional districts, were hardly able to 
attend the factories, for fear of the out- 
rages which the Protestants were ready to 
commit upon them, on account of the 
so-called atrocities committed upon the 
German troops in Belgium by the priests 
and monks of that country. This cam- 
paign of hatred and untruth, apparently 
organised by unseen leaders, has plunged the 
German people into a state which borders on 
delirium, and which will remain the eternal 
shame of those who have made themselves 
responsible for it. The results, of course, 
were not slow to materialise, and even in 
Germany the campaign has recoiled upon 
the German Catholic ecclesiastics. 

It will be enough for me to recall the 



66 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

case of the Dean of St. Nicholas of Elbing 
and his priests, who were subjected to the 
insults of the populace; and the case of 
the curate of Sourbrodt in the Eiffel, who 
was confined for three days in a narrow 
little room by infuriated German soldiers 
and severely maltreated. At the period 
when the popular excitement reached its 
climax, the majority of the Belgian ecclesi- 
astics taken to Germany as hostages were 
subjected to the utmost violence by the 
frantic populace, even in Catholic towns. 
I could furnish the most circumstantial 
proofs of this fact. 

Excesses of this kind, which have 
occurred even in Germany, deserve no 
more than a mention beside the monstrous 
atrocities of which almost the entire Belgian 
clergy has been the victim. In many 
places, indeed, the German troops began 
by maltreating the ecclesiastics and taking 
them away as hostages. The nature of 
the maltreatment inflicted is in many cases 
impossible to describe. Let us remark 
merely that priests have frequently been 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 67 

entirely deprived of their clothing without 
any regard for their modesty. 

This happened, among others, to Dr. 
Noel, Professor in the University of 
Louvain ; the cure of St. Joseph at Louvain ; 
the rector of the Schentwald missions, and 
various other priests, who, being arrested 
as they were escaping from the blazing 
city, were shut up, completely naked, in 
pigsties, after the animals had been driven 
out. (Report of the Commission of 
Inquiry.) 

Very often, also, ecclesiastics were tor- 
tured by threats of death, ranged against 
a wall, and covered by rifles, until they 
were like to lose their reason. Then they 
would be left in peace for a few hours or 
days, only to be subjected anew to the same 
threats of execution, and other threats 
even worse. 

One ecclesiastic, for example, M. Gorhn, 
Director of the Episcopal College at Vise, 
was placed against a wall for execution 
nine times in the course of a fortnight. 
(Declaration made to me by this ecclesi- 
astic in person.) 



68 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

The highest ecclesiastical dignitaries were 
not spared. The venerable Bishop of Li6ge, 
Mgr. Rutten, an old man of nearly eighty 
years, was taken as hostage, led to the 
citadel, and there had to wait for an hour 
in the pouring rain, until he was confined, 
with his companions, in a stable or barn 
of some sort, where there was not even a 
chair on which he could rest. (Declaration 
of the Bishop.) 

Mgr. Heylen, Bishop of Namur, was con- 
fined in a small room in the Hotel de Ville, 
at first without a chair or provision for the 
night. Later the H6tel de Ville and whole 
blocks of houses on the neighbouring Place 
were burned and transformed into a fright- 
ful heap of ruins. The Bishop and the 
priests who shared his captivity would have 
been burned alive, but that they dropped 
from a window overlooking the external 
courtyard of the Hotel de Ville and so took 
to flight. 

The worthy Bishop of Tournai, since 
dead, who was also nearly eighty years of 
age, was led as a hostage with the notables 
of his city along the road from Ath to 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 69 

Brussels. As the aged Bishop, exhausted 
by this unaccustomed exertion under the 
burning August sun, was tottering with 
fatigue and nearly falling to the ground, 
one of the soldiers who accompanied the 
convoy of prisoners cruelly struck him. 
(Report of the Commission of Inquiry.) 

The state of mind responsible for these 
deeds is still so widely prevalent in Germany 
that some, at least, of the ecclesiastics 
massacred in Belgium are said to have com- 
mitted such actions against the German 
soldiers as would have cost them their life. 
Pax-Information (third year, No. 5, p. 2) 
even distributes privately items of news 
intended to confirm this point of view. 
These statements are in open contradiction 
to the testimony of the entire Belgian 
people, and, above all, to that of the com- 
petent Bishops, who have in every case 
instituted a complete and detailed inquiry. 
Mgr. Rutten, Bishop of Li£ge, informed me 
personally that he had sent the Governor- 
General of Belgium, who was at that time 
Marshal von der Goltz, the documents 
relating to the inquiry which he had insti- 



70 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

tuted, and which, without exception, and 
in an absolutely convincing manner, estab- 
lished the entire innocence of the priests 
executed in his diocese, but that von der 
Goltz never vouchsafed him the least reply. 
Mgr. Heylen testifies of the twenty-five 
priests massacred in the diocese of Namur — 

" They were numbered among the most 
virtuous of my priests, the gentlest and 
the most zealous for the welfare of souls/ ' 
(Lent mandamus.) 

Similarly, in this diocese of Namur, the 
inquiry which was instituted proved the 
complete innocence of all these priests. 
On bringing this result to the knowledge of 
the German authorities, the Bishop ended 
with the statement that if he could be 
provided with proof that a single priest 
of his diocese had behaved improperly 
toward the German soldiers, he would 
pledge himself to bestow the severest repri- 
mand on him, and would not hesitate to 
give public expression of his displeasure 
from the vantage of the pulpit. This com- 
munication, like the others, never, as far 
as I know, elicited any reply. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 71 

Cardinal Mercier gives the following testi- 
mony as to the priests of his diocese — 

" In my diocese alone I know that 
thirteen priests or monks have been put 
to death. One of them, the Cure of 
Gebrode, in all probability died the death 
of a martyr. I have made a pilgrimage to 
his tomb, and, surrounded by the flock 
which only yesterday he was tending with 
the zeal of an apostle, I implored him from 
the heights of Heaven to watch over his 
parish, the diocese, and the country. ... I 
assert upon my honour, and I am ready 
to declare upon oath, that I have not 
hitherto encountered a single instance in 
which an ecclesiastic, whether secular or 
regular, has incited the civil population to 
take up arms against the enemy. All, on 
the contrary, have faithfully obeyed the 
episcopal instructions which they had 
received as far back as the first days of 
August, and which bade them exert their 
moral influence over our population, in 
order to keep them quiet and regardful of 
military regulations." * 

1 From Cardinal Mercier' s Christmas Letter. 



72 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

Cardinal Mercier's Christmas Pastoral 
Letter gave rise to the exchange of the 
following letters, a correspondence which 
is highly significant — 

Colonel Wengersky, commander of the 
district of Malines, sent Cardinal Mercier 
the following letter. The original German 
text is not available, but here is the trans- 
lation of the French version — 

" Malines, January 20, 1915. 

" Commander of District J. R. Nos. 262/III. 

" To His Eminence the Cardinal Arch- 
bishop of Malines. 

" According to a note which appeared 
in a newspaper, numerous priests are said 
to have been killed, although innocent, in 
the diocese of Malines. 

" In order to be able to institute an 
inquiry, I beg your Excellency to be so 
good as to inform me whether priests have 
been killed, although innocent, and what 
priests have been killed. 

"I much desire to learn under what 
circumstances these actions are supposed 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 73 

to have been committed, what troops may 
be regarded as responsible, and on what 
date these events are said to have occurred. 
" District Commander, 

" Colonel Wengersky." 1 

This letter reached Malines on January 
24, and Mgr. Mercier at once wrote the 
following reply — 

" Herr Kreischef, 

" I have the honour to acknowledge 
the receipt of the letter 268/II, 2 dated 
January 20, which you were good enough 
to send me. 

" The names of the priests and monks 
of the diocese of Malines who to my know- 
ledge have been put to death by the German 
troops are as follows : Dupierreux, of the 
Company of Jesus ; Brothers Sebastien and 
Albert, of the congregation of the Joseph- 
ites ; Brother Candide, of the congregation 

1 The French translation appeared with the 
German text in the XX* Sibcle (a semi-official Belgian 
journal now published at Havre) for February 21-22, 

1915. 

2 So in French text. 



74 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

of the Brothers of Mercy ; Father Maximin, 
Capuchin ; Father Vincent, conventual ; 
Carette, professor; Lombaerts, Goris, de 
Clerck, Dergent, Wouters, Van Bladel, cures. 

"At Christmas, when I published my 
pastoral letter, I did not yet know with 
certainty what had been the fate of the 
cure of Herent : since then his body has 
been recovered at Louvain and identified. 

" Other figures mentioned in my pastoral 
letter should be increased to-day : thus for 
Aerschot I gave the figure as ninety-one 
victims; now the total of the inhabitants 
of Aerschot disinterred has increased; a 
few days ago the figure was 143. But the 
moment has not come to lay stress upon 
these particular facts. The relation of 
these facts will be for the inquiry to which 
you enable me to look forward. 

" It will be a consolation to see a full 
light thrown upon the events which I have 
been forced to recall in my pastoral letter 
and others of the same kind. 

" But it is essential that the results of 
this inquiry shall be made apparent to all 
with irrefutable authority. 



PAN GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 75 

" To this end, I have the honour to propose 
to you, M. le Comte, and through your kind 
intervention to propose to the German authori- 
ties, that the commission of inquiry shall be 
composed in equal proportions of German 
delegates and Belgian magistrates, and pre- 
sided over by a representative of a neutral 
country. I am glad to believe that His 
Excellency the Minister of the United States 
would not refuse to accept this post or to 
entrust it to a delegate chosen by him. 

" Accept, I beg you, Herr Kreischef, 
the assurances of my high esteem. 
" D. J. Card. Mercier, 

" Arch, of M alines." 

The Cardinal's letter, so far as I know, 
remains unanswered to this day. On the 
other hand, the whole foreign Press in the 
four quarters of the world has published 
this exchange of letters and commented 
upon it with great severity. 

Does it not seem to you, Sir, that the 
honour of Germany demands that light 
should be thrown upon this affair, at the 
risk of causing the competent authorities 



76 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

to condemn the excesses committed, and 
at the cost of denying all responsibility 
for their occurrence? Is it not a duty 
incumbent upon all German Catholics to 
take this matter in hand for the honour 
of the Church and of the clergy, as well as 
for the honour of their country ? 

***** 

Do not, I beg you, Sir, attribute the 
freedom of language which I have employed 
here to Germanophobe intentions. On the 
very eve of hostilities I was intervening 
here, on this western frontier of the Ger- 
manic linguistic area, by writing and by 
speech, in favour of the true Germanism as 
against an exaggerated franscaillerie. On 
my initiation, and through my exertions, 
there was even erected, in my commune, a 
monument of considerable proportions to 
the memory of the battles which our fathers 
fought against the first French Republic. 
Germanophobes would not adopt my free- 
dom of speech; they seek rather to in- 
gratiate themselves, in order to surprise 
military secrets advantageous to the enemy. 
I address myself not to the Germanophobe 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 77 

Press abroad, but to Germany, to you, 
the member of the Reichstag, as the quali- 
fied political representative of the German 
Catholics. 

The German people, poisoned by the 
information presented by a Press devoid 
of a conscience, is still the prey of a sort 
of Nationalist delirium. The cause of the 
true Germanism can only suffer, while the 
military operations cannot benefit in the 
least therefrom. The aim of this long 
letter, in the measure of my poor abilities, 
is simply to aid in at length arousing the 
German people from the vertigo of a 
national hatred, which is corrupting every- 
thing, in order to lead it back to the true 
love for the fatherland. 

Accept, Sir, the expression of my high 
esteem. 

Emile Prum, Burgomaster. 
Commander of the Order of St. 
Sylvester and Member of the Perma- 
nent Committee of the International 
Eucharistic Congresses . 

Clervaux, Luxembourg, 
March n, 1915. 



II 

THE PROCEEDINGS INSTITUTED AGAINST 
M. PRUM 



Publication and Seizure of the 
Pamphlet 

Let us resume our commentary. 

The document which we have just trans- 
lated reached us by the hand of a reliable 
agent, but without any other indications 
than those which it bore within itself. But 
these are sufficient to enable us to form 
an idea of the value of the testimony here 
given, and of the courage required to 
give it. 

Isolated, disarmed, at the mercy of the 
invader, M. Prum raised his voice without 
recking of the consequences, as an im- 
partial witness — nay, a judge. He has 
seen ; he knows ; he gives his verdict. 

78 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 79 

We shall not greatly insist on the interest 
of this important document. We will only 
remark that it is the only one of its kind, 
and this kind is rare. M. Priim possesses 
all the qualities needful in order that his 
protest may travel far and be clearly heard. 

An eminent Catholic, as we have said, 
German in language, thought and culture, 
a neutral in the conflict, but well situated 
as an observer, M. Priim, unsolicited by 
any — save his own conscience — felt the 
need of rendering this unique homage to 
the Truth. 

We will not repeat what he has said and 
what the reader has just perused. His 
words are plain enough. His decision is 
definite enough. We should only spoil his 
deposition. Better to say nothing; to 
let nothing intervene between the reader 
and the text. It is the classic method. 

We shall not criticise. We shall say 
no more. We only regret that we have 
not more information as to the effect pro- 
duced in the Catholic circles of Germany 
by this unexpected ultimatum. It must 
have been considerable. Doubtless the 



80 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

immediate seizure of the pamphlet enabled 

the authorities to moderate this effect; 

but we know from other sources — as we 

shall presently see — that M. Priim's letter, 

before appearing in pamphlet form, was 

published in two Luxembourg newspapers, 

the Clerfer Echo and Fortschritt, published 

respectively at Clervaux and Diekirch. It 

is probable — it is certain — that M. Prum's 

letter was read by Herr Erzberger and the 

leaders of the sometime Catholic Centre. 

It is also certain that it moved them to 

anger. The German Catholic Press has 

doubtless treated the matter with the 

greatest reserve, 1 but we know that Herr 

Erzberger felt that M. Prum's thrust had 

gone home. This we know from Herr 

Erzberger himself. 

1 The Kolnische Volkszeitung of May 13, 1915, 
openly insults M. Priim. It states that " the Franco- 
philes have found unexpected assistance in the person 
of M. Prum," and that his open letter " is of a kind 
calculated to do a great deal of harm " to Herr 
Erzberger and the German Catholics. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 81 

II 

Herr Erzberger Prosecutes M. Prum 

Our information on this subject is derived 
from the Clerfer Echo, M. Priim's news- 
paper. Always sincere, always courage- 
ous, M. Prum continues to live and to think 
in the open. Having confided his anxieties 
to us, he now tells us of his tribulations. 

For the Clerfer Echo of April 3, 10, 15 
and 30 tells us that two prosecutions were 
instituted against M. Prum on account of 
his open letter. 

But we will let M. Prum speak for himself. 
This is what he tells us in the Clerfer Echo 
of April 3 — 

" In reply to my open letter, Herr 
Erzberger has lodged against me with 
the Public Prosecutor 1 of Luxembourg 
(Generalstaatsanwaltschaft) a complaint of 
insult. 2 Herr Erzberger does not, there- 

1 Procureur-general, Public Prosecutor or Attorney- 
General.— B.M. 

2 It is impossible to find legal English equivalents 
for terms describing plaints and indictments and 
actions unknown to English law. The terms can only 
be translated literally. — B.M. 

G 



82 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

fore, contest any of the facts alleged by 
me. That would have been impossible, 
for all my statements are supported by 
the most conclusive evidence. Neither can 
Herr Erzberger regard any of the expres- 
sions which I have employed as insulting. 
Nor does he complain of a qualified in- 
sult (Formalbeleidigung) . Moreover, he ex- 
pressly declares that I have not maligned 
his person (dass ich seiner Person nicht zu 
nahe getreten sei). On the contrary: he 
regards himself as insulted in his quality 
as Member of the Reichstag, because I 
maintain in my open letter that he has, 
although a Catholic, taken up a position 
which is in opposition to the Pope. 

11 But what is this? I have quoted the 
very articles which Herr Erzberger has con- 
tributed to the Press, and even verbatim 
passages cut from newspapers which my 
adversary himself has sent me. I have com- 
pared these declarations with the purport 
of the instructions which Pope Benedict 
XV, in his consistorial address of January 
22, 1915, addressed to the belligerents in 
the face of Christendom. Herr Erzberger 



PAN-GERMANISM u. CHRISTENDOM 83 

cannot cast any doubt on the exactitude 
of the respective texts which I have quoted. 
If the result is a glaring contrast, as, for 
example, when Herr Erzberger expresses 
a desire to see the city of London entirely 
annihilated 1 — a desire which cannot by 
any possibility be reconciled with the 
instructions, prayers and urgent adjura- 
tions which the Pope has addressed to the 
belligerents, that they should spare the civil 
populations and work as little devasta- 
tion as possible upon the enemy territory 
which they have entered — if this be so, the 
fault is not mine. The contrast, which 
Herr Erzberger finds offensive, cannot be 
suppressed by lodging a complaint against 
me with the Public Prosecutor of Luxem- 
bourg. If Herr Erzberger, the member of 
the Reichstag, feels it necessary to justify 
himself, he can turn to Rome. He knows 
the way thither very well, and no one will 
conceal the fact that his declarations have 
provoked violent protests in the neutral 
Catholic Press, which is particularly devoted 

1 See Herr Erzberger' s article, " Only, no Senti- 
mentality ! " in Der Tag, No, 30, 1915. 



84 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

to the Holy See — in Switzerland, for 
example, and Italy. 

" One thing has occurred in connection 
with Herr Erzberger's complaint which has 
greatly astonished me, and of which I feel 
I must speak. More than ten days ago, 
before any one could have known of the 
steps then contemplated by Herr Erzberger, 
these measures were announced in Luxem- 
bourg as being imminent. I draw the con- 
clusion that Herr Erzberger is constantly 
in touch with Luxembourg, having corre- 
spondents here, if not agents, to whom he 
has assigned the task of exerting a moral 
influence over neutral countries. This 
proves admirably how fully I was justified 
in freely and publicly opposing their efforts." 



Ill 

The Luxembourg Government to the 
aid of Herr Erzberger 

We spoke first of Herr Erzberger's 
plaint, because it is — from the Catholic and 
psychological point of view — the most im- 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 85 

portant. The documents in our possession 
do not enable us to state the precise date 
on which it was lodged. But it must 
have been about the end of March, per- 
haps on April I. In any case, before this 
date another judicial action — of which, 
again, we do not know the precise date — 
was instituted against M. Priim, this time 
by the Luxembourg Government. 

This action — of which we find a detailed 
report in the Clerfer Echo of April 10 
— has so far expressed itself in two 
ways : (i) at the request of the Public 
Prosecutor of Luxembourg, M. Priim's 
pamphlet, published at Diekirch by M. 
Cariers, at the Fortschritt printing offices, 
was judicially seized ; (2) a rather fantastic 
public action was instituted against M. 
Priim. We cannot better expound the 
facts than by translating an article relating 
to these two actions which appeared in the 
Clerfer Echo of April 10 over the signature 
of M. Cariers. Here is the article — 

"It is already some weeks since we 
informed our readers that the seizure of 
the Priim-Erzberger pamphlet, which we 



86 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

had intended to publish, had been ordered 
by the Public Prosecutor of Luxembourg. 

" In due season we vigorously protested 
against this measure, for there was and is 
nothing to explain it. 

" The police were not even told which 
article of the law was relied upon to give 
this judicial seizure a legal basis ; it was only 
later that we were informed that it had 
taken place in virtue of Article 123 of the 
Penal Code. 

" Here is this Article 123 — 

" Whosoever, by means of hostile actions, 
not approved by the Government, shall 
have exposed the State to hostilities on the 
part of a foreign Power, will be punished 
by five to ten years' detention, and if 
hostilities result therefrom, by ten to 
fifteen years' detention." l 

" Although the commentators have very 

1 We have collated the official text of the Luxem- 
bourg Code, which is drafted in French, Ity means of 
the Code penal luxembourgeois, published and anno- 
tated by Ruppert, Councillor, Secretary General to 
the Government, Secretary to the Council of 
State, and Clerk of the Chamber of Deputies, 
Luxembourg. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 87 

greatly extended the scope of this article » 
of the law, it must be remembered, in order 

x We do not know what the jurisprudence and 
legal doctrine of Luxembourg have decided in this 
matter M. Carters' estimation seems to us excessive. 
Article 123 of the Penal Code of Luxembourg is 
merely the imperfect and attenuated combination 
of Articles 84 and 85 of the French Penal Code. 
These two fantastic articles are to-day regarded as 
obsolete, modern law no longer permitting of their 
amplication, for reasons which we could not enter 
into for lack of space, and which would only interest 

^Still these articles, especially Article 84, have 
given 'rise to a certain amount of jurisprudence, 
albeit very meagre and insignificant. For example: 
?he capture of a foreign vessel; violent attacks upon 
1 forefgn customs post; gifts made to Don Carlos 
bv a certain Jauge; the subscription opened by La 
taie Trance in 1873 for the benefit of the Carhsts, 
the exhibition, by the newspaper La Revanche, m 
1887 of a written placard placed beneath the French 
and Russian colours, announcing the success, in 
Msace-Lorraine, of all the protesting candidates for 

^u^nylie, the French text and the Luxembourg 
text from which it is derived both contain an identical 
Sr ssion : hostile actions. What is a hostile action ? 
He« the French doctrine, in default of jurisprudence, 
wSoh has never-for good reason-had any occasion 
to come into play, possesses a tradition which has 
continued unchanged : " We must confine ourselves 
to saying, in the terms of the law, that hostile actions 



88 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

to avoid a wholly arbitrary interpretation, 
that the action at issue cannot possess a 

are all material actions which, not approved by the 
Government, have exposed the State to a declaration 
of war " (Faustin Helie, Theorie du Code Penal, 
II. 436, ed. 1872). "The essential condition is that 
material actions must be in question. Indeed, 
Article 84 does not punish the offence as it might 
express itself by written or spoken opinion, but only 
the act, that is to say, a tangible, material deed " 
(Garraud, Traite theorique et pratique du Droit penal 
fran$ais, III. 837). " Hostile actions must consist 
of a material, tangible, external deed. However 
comprehensive these expressions may be, one cannot 
include by them offences toward foreign sovereigns 
or outrages committed upon diplomatic agents. . . . 
Our provisions would not be applicable to journalists, 
who, without being guilty of outrages or provoca- 
tions or material and hostile actions, might expose 
France to diplomatic complications, reprisals, or a 
risk of war, by imprudent or impassioned polemics " 
(Garcon, Code Penal annotd, sub- Articles 84 and 85, 
Nos. 12 and 14). Such, too, is the doctrine of M. le 
Poitevin. 

So M. Priim's letter, not being a material act, is 
not within the scope of Article 123. His lofty 
polemics concern the Press and the Press laws. Now 
the Luxembourg Press Law of July 20, 1809 (art. 5), 
like the French law of 1881, punishes only insults 
offered to sovereigns or diplomatic agents. 

In our opinion, then, it is impossible to find in 
the whole arsenal of Luxembourg law a single text 
which applies to the present case, on account of the 



PAN-GERMANISM i>. CHRISTENDOM 89 

character of hostility unless this hostility 
exists in the mind of its author— that is, 
unless the latter yields to external constraint 
or acts without discernment.' ' 

M. Cariers then explains in detail that 
M. Priim, as he has expressly declared, 
cherished no hostility toward the German 
Army, nor toward the German people. 
He simply profited by the glaring con- 
trast which reveals itself between the 
Nietzschean philosophy, which has insti- 
gated so many regrettable actions, on the 
one hand, and, on the other hand, the 
instructions of the Pope, in order to invite 
the belligerent States to a policy of recon- 
ciliation. The facts which he alleges are 
intended only to justify his views. It is 
their perpetration which injures Germany, 
not the conclusions which he draws from 

expression "hostile action," which is extremely 
definite. Hence it matters little whether the breach 
of the law implied by the Luxembourg parquet * is or 
is not contraventional, that is, whether it requires, or 
does not require, in order that it may be realised, a 
hostile intention. Time will have shown whether 
there are judges in Diekirch. 

* The State or prosecuting magistracy.— B.M. 



90 PAN-GERMANISM v\ CHRISTENDOM 

them. Moreover, his " open letter " is in 
a sense merely the development of an 
article published by him before the war 
in the Allgemeine Rundschau, in which he 
upheld " the true Germanism/' Where is 
the hostility in this? 

M. Cariers goes on to say that the rights 
and duties of neutrals should receive more 
consideration. Their rights are violated 
by an occupation " which we do not recog- 
nise/ ' As for their duties, it must be 
remembered that later on " they will be 
called to account for the manner in which 
they have fulfilled them " ; that is, as far 
as they are allowed to exercise them at all. 

Having observed that there is nothing 
to be feared from Germany more than that 
which she has already done, M. Cariers 
adjures the Government " to remember 
that even under these difficult circum- 
stances our national possessions must be 
defended with the greatest energy, lest we 
incur the guilt of having despised those 
rights which constitute our national in- 
dependence." 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 91 

IV 

M. Prum's Defence and Justification 

It was on April 8 that M. Prum was 
summoned before the examining magis- 
trate of Diekirch to reply : (i) to an action 
instituted against him by the Public Prose- 
cutor of Luxembourg in respect of his 
" open letter " to Herr Erzberger, published 
in the columns of Fortschritt and the Clerfer 
Echo; and (2) to the complaint lodged 
against him for the same cause by Herr 
Erzberger, member of the German Reichs- 
tag. 

M. Prum himself relates in five full 
columns of the Clerfer Echo for April 15 
how this session passed off, what he was 
accused of, and what he replied. 

Here, to begin with, is the substance of 
the Public Prosecutor's indictment— 

" From an examination of the facts it 
appears that in order to appreciate the 
culpability of M. Priim it is necessary to 
bring in as principal motive the fact that 
his assertions impute to the German Army 



92 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

a host of crimes or other acts which violate 
the laws of humanity, although such acts 
have not in any way been established, 
after hearing both parties, in their historic 
elements, and although their determining 
causes are unknown. This uncritical util- 
isation of foreign documents, many times 
refuted in the bulk and in detail by the 
German Press, is of a nature to do injury 
to the prestige and good fame of the 
German Army, and, by causing mental 
tension, is likely to provoke a declaration 
of war on the part of the German Empire/ ' 

M. Priim extracts from this indictment 
seven grounds of accusation. Having iso- 
lated them, he replies to them separately. 

" i. My statements are said to impute to 
the German Army a host of crimes or other 
actions which violate the laws of humanity. 

" This accusation is based on the hypo- 
thesis that I have described a great number 
of crimes and atrocities. This is quite 
incorrect. In the ' open letter ' which is 
the subject of proceedings I have as far 
as possible avoided descriptions of this 
kind. However, a few pictures of warfare 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 93 

were to have been appended as documentary 
evidence. These were to establish the facts 
mentioned in my letter in an authentic and 
irrefutable manner. In conformity with 
my official declaration I have freely aban- 
doned the publication of this series of 
articles. " 1 However, the Belgian atrocities 
are a potent, established, indisputable fact. 
" These facts are known to every one in 
Luxembourg, for there is hardly a family 
living in the State which has not relations, 
in varying numbers, in Belgium, or friends 
or acquaint ances." And M. Prtim recalls 
the conclusions of the Commission of Inquiry 
and the letters of Cardinal Mercier and 
Mgr. Heylen. 

" 2. / am said to have described events 
which have occurred in Belgium although 
they have not in any way been established, 
after the hearing of all parties, in their 
historic elements. 

"My reply," says M. Priim, "is the 

1 Allusion is. here made to some controversy of 
which we know nothing. It is very difficult to obtain 
the smaller newspapers from Germany or Luxem- 
bourg. 



94 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

same. Look at the ruins, at the dead. 
You cannot alter these. The world, once 
for all, has witnessed these things. And I 
have not abused the situation. Do not 
believe it. I have made use of Mgr. 
Heylen's letter, but why ? 

" The pastoral letter of the Bishop of 
Namur was read in all the pulpits of the 
diocese. The German authorities contented 
themselves with forbidding a German trans- 
lation intended for the German-speaking 
population of the diocese, on the pretext 
that it was not accurate. Nevertheless 
the original text, as the German authorities 
knew, was publicly read. This is why I 
considered myself justified in quoting this 
letter in my open letter to Herr Erzberger, 
and in regarding it as an impartial descrip- 
tion of the events." 

M. Priim once again cites extracts from 
this letter, and concludes : " The accusation 
made by Mgr. Heylen in such affecting 
terms, in the most official manner, and in 
sanctuary, is based upon definite facts, 
which the German authorities could neither 
contradict nor disprove. If this evidence 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 95 

cannot be ranked as ' evidence based on 
the hearing of all parties ' this is merely 
because no one on the German side has 
been able to oppose it ; because, up to now, 
the German authorities have refused to 
take part in an impartial inquiry ; because 
they have done nothing to carry out the 
proposals made by Cardinal Mercier in his 
letter of January 24, 1915. As for learning 
what is thought in the civilised world, 
beyond the frontiers of the territory in 
German occupation, of Mgr. Heylen s com- 
plaint, I shall content myself with citing 
one single witness, the most highly placed 
and venerable of all possible witnesses/' 

M. Priim then reproduces the letter 
addressed to Mgr. Heylen on February 4, 
1915, by the Pope. This letter the French 
Press has published. In it Benedict XV 
does not for a moment question the fact that 
the diocese of Namur has been hideously 
ravaged. It is a letter of consolation and 
encouragement; he prays for peace and 
blesses the victims. 

" After such confirmation/ ' says M. Priim, 
"what Catholic can be permitted to refuse 



96 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

to regard Mgr. Heylen's letter as an au- 
thentic document of the highest import- 
ance ? And who dares to complain that I 
have utilised documents of no value ? " 

"3. It is said that the determining causes 
of these events have not been established." 

Again, the same reply. " However, I 
have avoided entering into any discus- 
sion of particular actions. I have simply 
referred all the excesses committed in 
Belgium to one single cause, a cause which 
is undeniable, and is diffused throughout 
all the newspapers of all Germany : it is 
the hideous and systematic Press campaign 
which has been waged against the Belgian 
people since the commencement of hos- 
tilities." M. Prum refers once more to his 
pamphlet. No doubt, he adds, there are 
other causes besides this single cause. 

" It is known, and may be proved, by the 
public registers of the communes affected, 
as well as by innumerable witnesses, that 
at Tamines, for example, 600 persons, and 
at Dinant more than 800, including women 
and children, even of two years of age, were 
executed — that is, they were assembled in 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 97 

a public place and killed by machine-gun 
fire. Whether any inquiry, whether any 
military commission of any kind preceded 
these wholesale executions, we do not know, 
and in spite of the pressing and vehement 
objurgations of the international Press, it 
has never been possible to obtain the publi- 
cation of the smallest documentary evidence 
of military trials in respect of these execu- 
tions/ ' 1 

" 4. I am supposed to have made uncritical 
use of documents of foreign origin. 

" This expression, which includes by the 
term ' foreign ' all that is not German, is 
certainly employed by an official of the 
Luxembourg courts only as a quotation 
(referierend) , 2 for to us, the people of 
Luxembourg, the Germans also are foreigners 
at the present moment, and foreigners, 
moreover, who have broken their sworn 

1 See Le Crime de Guillaume, II., by P. van Honette. 

2 M. Priim seems to hint that the German 
authorities dictated the terms of his report to the 
Public Prosecutor of Luxembourg. Refieren is a 
juridical term used to denote the act of reporting 
or summing up the statements of others, or the 
plea of one of two contending parties. 

H 



98 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

faith, their oath, their treaties, and the 
public law of nations." (See the Chan- 
cellor's speech of August 4, 1914.) 

" As for Belgium — all Belgian official 
documents seem to me of my nationality 
and all German documents foreign. So if I 
am censured for making use of official 
documents which are known to the whole 
world, which were published by the Com- 
mission of Inquiry composed of Belgian 
jurists, this censure is impertinent. It is 
enough to read my letter to realise that I 
did not make use of these documents, for 
the good reason that I did not wish to 
enter into any questions of the kind to 
which these documents refer." 

"5. The German Press is said to have 
refuted, in bulk and in detail, the documents 
of the Belgian Commission of Inquiry. 

" I have no incentive to take sides in 
this dispute of the German Press. In any 
case, it is certain that not one of the 
facts which I have related according to the 
public letters of the two Bishops has been 
either refuted or denied." 

"6. My letter is of a nature to injure the 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 99 

prestige and the good fame of the German 
Army. 

" The excesses of a few, however terrible 
they may be, cannot smirch the honour of 
any entire army or corps, unless it is the 
case that they are not publicly condemned 
or expressly disavowed. The prestige of 
the German Army will be injured by vain 
attempts to enforce silence in respect of 
excesses which have indubitably been com- 
mitted, or to deny them. My efforts have 
quite another purpose. 

" Cardinal Mercier has officially proposed 
the institution of an impartial inquiry. The 
human population of the four quarters of 
the globe knows that this proposal was 
made, and for three and a half months 
has been waiting for the reply. I have 
addressed myself to the political repre- 
sentatives of the German Catholics in this 
neighbourhood, hoping to convince them 
of the necessity of accepting Cardinal 
Mercier's proposal. 

' Those alone need fear such an inquiry 
who are responsible for the excesses to be 
investigated. These men, whose hands are 



100 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

stained with the blood of so many innocent 
and peaceable persons, are not so interesting 
that we need stand on so much ceremony 
with them. On the other hand, such an 
inquiry, whatever its result, would greatly 
honour the German Army and the German 
people." 

" 7. I am said to have exposed Luxembourg 
to the danger of hostilities, by exciting the 
minds of my readers. 

" This possibility, I consider, must be 
absolutely rejected. I have too much con- 
fidence in the spirit of justice prevailing in 
the ruling circles of Germany to believe in 
the possibility of a German declaration of 
war upon Luxembourg on account of a 
newspaper article, which to my thinking 
is highly sympathetic to Germany, and irre- 
futable both in purport and in substance. 
The fears of the Public Prosecutor seem 
to me unfounded, and the fact that the 
Luxembourg authorities regard the German 
authorities as capable of assuming such an 
attitude in respect of little Luxembourg, an 
attitude as devoid of the spirit of justice 
as it is of the spirit of chivalry, should 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 101 

rather be regarded as a cruel insult to 
Germany. " 

Such is the system of defence adopted 
by M. Prum. In closing, he turns to the 
judges of his own country; he begs them 
to be equitable and impartial. " If I am 
condemned," he declares, " I shall be proud 
to have suffered whatever penalty may be 
mine in the cause of truth, justice, and 
humanity, and I shall also feel proud that 
I have defended the existence of our 
country, which is an independent State/' 



V 

Herr Erzberger replies : M. Prum 

REFUTES HIM 

The Clerfer Echo of April 30 informs us 
that Herr Erzberger attempted to reply to 
M. Prum. When? How? We are not 
told. Faithful to his dialectic method, 
M. Prum analyses the different heads of 
the argument opposed to him, and replies 
to each in turn. This is what he has to 
say— 



102 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

i. To maintain that Herr Erzberger is 
placing himself in opposition to the Pope is 
an insult which is yet further accentuated by 
the fact that the Pope has received Kerr 
Erzberger in a friendly manner and on 
several occasions. 

" It was a great mistake on Herr Erz- 
berger's part to refer to these audiences. 1 
They were private facts of no external sig- 
nificance, which merit no attention in the 
face of the Pontiff's public declarations. 
Moreover, now, if ever, is the time to apply 
the proverb ' One receives absolution as one 
confesses/ In the course of his audiences 
the Pope replies only to questions which 
are put to him. It is impossible that Herr 
Erzberger could have explained to the 
Holy Father his theories concerning the 
annexation of neutral States, or the pitiless 

1 In the Echo de Paris of May 10, 1915, we read : 
" Rome, May 9. — I learn that the Pope has refused 
to receive the German Catholic deputy Erzberger, 
who came here to intrigue in favour of Germany. 
To the ecclesiastical world of Italy this refusal is 
highly significant, and will produce a very good 
effect in France. In Luxembourg and Belgium, too, 
the impression produced will be excellent." 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 103 

manner in which war should be made . . . 
and that the Pope should have approved of 
them. I, too, have been received on many 
occasions, and in the most paternal fashion, 
by Leo XIII and Pius IX. But I have never 
from this drawn the conclusion that the 
Holy See confirmed my personal opinions.' ' 

2. The opinion of the Belgian Minister 
to the Holy See by no means diminishes the 
value of these audiences, especially as M. 
Prum does not publish the Pope's reply to 
this minister. 

M. Prum confesses that he does not 
understand this argument. He is well 
acquainted with M. van den Heuvel, whom 
he went to see at Gand shortly before the 
war; he admires his juridico-ecclesiastical 
works; he also knows that the Press of 
the Centre has violently taken him to task 
for his pamphlet on " the violation of 
Belgian neutrality/ ' In his relations with 
Herr Erzberger, M. Prum has never spoken 
of M. van den Heuvel, has not quoted a 
single word of his. Why, then, this men- 
tion of him, and what is so mysterious 
about the Pope's reply ? 



104 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

It was officially published by the Osser- 
vatore romano, on March 17, and M. Priim 
reproduces it in its entirety. In this reply 
the Pope declares in correct phrases that 
he seizes the occasion which is offered him 
of renewing " the sentiments which he 
has expressed, whether to the Cardinal 
Archbishop of Malines or in his consistorial 
address/' M. van den Heuvel having 
spoken of the violation of Belgian neutrality, 
the Pope replies by insisting on the role of 
King Albert and the benevolent nature of 
his feelings toward him. One could not be 
more explicit. The argument, if there is 
any, is thus entirely ineffectual. 

3. The assertion that my articles have 
caused violent indignation among the Catholics 
of neutral countries is not true. M. Priim 
cites no proof of this. On the contrary, in 
Italy and Spain the Catholics share my point 
of view. 

M. Priim replies that he would have to 
make so many citations that he would 
rather dispense with them. As for the 
German Catholics, it is very possible that 
all share Herr Erzberger's point of view, so 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 105 

imbued are they with national particu- 
larism. Here, for example, is Der Tag, a 
Berlin newspaper, which is honoured by 
contributions from the most prominent 
Catholics of the Centre— Erzberger, Bachem 
and Martin Spahn. Well, what do we 
find in Der Tag ? 

In its issue for April 7 (No. 80), Der Tag 
published an article by Moritz Reinhold 
Stern, in which we read : "I salute thee, 
Germany, saviour of the world I" In this 
same number Arthur Brausewetter speaks 
of " a saviour, who is German, for in these 
days, when the world can only be healed 
by the German character, it can find 
strength and support only in a German 
Saviour. . . . In Christ all is German to 
the core.' ' 1 Herr Brausewetter declares that 
to-day he understands the Holy Ghost. It 
is that which calls all Germans to unite, 
without distinction of creed or party, in 
order to save the great German cause. 
M. Priim regards this as a paganisation 
of Christianity, and compares Herr Brause- 
wetter's article with another assertion which 
1 Urdeutsch. 



106 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

appeared in Der Tag of April i, 1915 : " The 
ancient faith of our Pagan ancestors is 
living again in us." The religious revival 
excited by the war in Germany " is a return 
to Teutonic paganism." Last Easter a 
Catholic newspaper went so far as to write : 
" Christ is risen from the dead ! Rejoice, 
for Jesus, thy German Saviour, is re-arisen ! " 

That Italian or Spanish Catholics should 
share this point of view is absolutely im- 
possible, says M. Priim. For that matter, 
we know what was the attitude of the 
Unione popolare, the organisation of the 
Italian Catholics. At its general assembly 
two resolutions were recently adopted. 
The first declared that when peace is con- 
cluded the duty of Catholics will be to 
ensure that right and justice will be 
respected. The second insisted that the 
independence of Belgium must be re- 
spected. 

4. The invitation — couched in offensive 
terms — which M. Priim addresses to the 
German Catholics, to the effect that they shall 
intervene for the honour of the Church and 
her clergy, is an insult. I myself have done 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 107 

what a Catholic should do. The Court will 
decide between us. 

" Germany/' replies M. Priim, " being 
divorced from the civilised world, no longer 
understands anything of what is happening, 
to such an extent is she retired within herself. 
She has lost the sense of reality. I exercised 
my rights as a Catholic by inviting the 
German Catholics to respond to Cardinal 
Mercier's invitation, which asks for an 
official and impartial inquiry. No one will 
prevent me from exercising these rights." 

5. M. Prtirn has no mandate to issue 
instructions. We have our Bishops and the 
Pope. 

" This," declares M. Priim, " is something 
new, which pleases me. For years I have 
heard Herr Erzberger and his friends of the 
Centre demanding, at the tops of their 
voices, the ' declericalisation ' of Catholic 
Germany, and expressly refusing to obey 
the directions of their Bishops. 1 To-day 
they are hiding behind the Bishops. But 
the German Bishops, in all probability, will 
refuse any pronouncement on a matter of 
1 See Appendix, 



108 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

external policy, such as the annexation of 
Belgium and Luxembourg. None the less, 
it seems to me that this does concern me." 
And M. Priim closes by addressing a few 
stinging remarks to Herr Erzberger, the 
" professional politician/' Herr Erzberger 
will not prevail against equity, justice, and 
humanity. 



VI 

Conclusion 

And that is how matters stand. At the 
moment of writing we have received no 
further news of the case. We do not know 
what is or will be the lot of M. Priim. 

In any event, whatever the issue of his 
trial, it must be admitted that in all 
Luxembourg, perhaps in all Christendom, 
the boldest voice which has been raised to 
protest against the abuse of force, and to 
arraign it, has been that of the Catholic 
Opposition of Luxembourg incarnate in 
M. Priim. So true is it that religious con- 
victions, when they are righteous and pro- 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 109 

found, constitute the best guarantee of the 
truth, and the surest means of attaining it ! 

Reduced by the cleverness and cunning 
of M. Eyschen, the Waldeck-Rousseau of 
Luxembourg, to the ungrateful part of 
Leader of the Opposition, M. Priim has, in 
this capacity, during peace and war alike, 
displayed the rarest of qualities. While his 
rival accommodated the invader, M. Priim 
was unwilling to abdicate. He made his 
protest, which has nothing platonic about 
it, nothing qualified, nothing expedient. 

Whatever opinion he may hold regarding 
the war, whatever his sympathies may be, 
no Catholic can without emotion read these 
pages, full as they are of a lofty religious 
inspiration, dictated to a man of heart by 
preoccupations as far as possible removed 
from all spirit of party. 

He will also admire the courage of 
this Catholic writer. He will thank him 
for having given to the world the spectacle 
of a liberty which nothing inhibits, neither 
the foreign occupation nor the omnipotence 
of the occupier. 



Ill 

APPENDIX 

THE EVOLUTION OF THE GERMAN 
CATHOLIC CENTRE 



The Quintessence of Germanism 

Thoroughly to comprehend M. Priim's 
highly significant pamphlet, 1 to grasp its 
full meaning, and to estimate its import, 
it is necessary to be in possession of certain 
facts relating to the German mentality, and 
also to the activity exerted in the heart of 
the Germanism thus defined by the German 
Catholic Centre. In other words, to appre- 
ciate M. Priim's manifesto in the light of his 
motives, it is absolutely necessary that we 
should refer it to its twofold environment, 

1 See Le Correspondant for April 25, 1915, and Le 
Croix for April 21 and 23. 
no 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 111 

Catholic and German, and inquire into the 
relations which govern the two factors 
of Catholicism and Germanism, and their 
mutual actions and reactions. What is 
the tendency of Germanism, and what, on 
the other hand, is the evolution of Catholi- 
cism in Germany, or rather of the German 
Catholics, from the political, social and 
cultural point of view, in its relation to 
this Germanism? This is what we must 
inquire into and establish as objectively 
as possible, if we wish to form a lucid con- 
ception and serve the cause of truth. 

The illuminating chapter on " Germanic 
Culture and Catholicism " in M. Georges 
Goyau's La Guerre Allemande et la Catholi- 
cisme x will considerably assist us in the first 
part of our task. We should seek in vain 
for a more certain and better-informed 
guide than this historian of Catholicism in 
Germany, whose work is at once so diligent, 
honest, eloquent, and concise. Few writers 
or thinkers are as familiar as M. Goyau with 
the penetralia of Germanic thought and 
will in the century in which we are living. 

Published under the direction of Mgr. Baudrillart. 



112 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

The best thing we can do, therefore, is to 
give a summary of his conclusions. 

M. Goyau's first statement refers to 
Germanic culture. It is impossible to blink 
one's eyes to the fact that the evangelical 
Empire 1 of Germany has since 1871 thrown 
itself into two great wars, both undertaken 
in the name of this Kultur : the first was 
declared against Catholicism, and was the 
Kulturkampf, the struggle for Kultur ; the 
second, declared against Europe, is the war 
of to-day. 

In the name and for the glory of Kultur 
11 Prussian Royalty deposed, imprisoned, 
and exiled archbishops and bishops ; in 
a certain number of Catholic parishes it 
prohibited the administration of the sacra- 
ments; it condemned to prison those 
heroic cures who persisted in reconciling 
the dying with their God." The effects of 
this persecution have not all been effaced, 
far from it ! and the Imperial code retains 
in its arsenals the most prohibitive and 

1 It was in 1881 that the question of the essentially 
evangelical (that is, Lutheran) character of the Ger- 
man Empire was first raised by a German Catholic, 
Abt Majunke, in his famous pamphlet, Das evan- 
gelische Kaisertum. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 113 

arbitrary articles which could be imagined 
for the purpose of hampering the Catholic 
ministry. The second war to be waged in 
the name of this same Kultur was com- 
menced by Germany in 1914, and it was 
at first waged most desperately against 
" Catholic " Belgium ; it was in " Catholic " 
Belgium that it raged more furiously, 
perhaps, than in the north of France. " The 
second Kulturkampf has laid low upon the 
soil of Wallonia, Flanders, and Lorraine 
a certain number of martyrs who were 
suspect because they were priests, and were 
shot because they were suspect." 

What is the quintessence of this Kultur 
whose manifestations are so homogeneous ? 
" I open the books of the theologians, 
historians, and political economists whom 
Prussia, in the course of the nineteenth 
century, scattered all over Germany . . . 
and I find on every page a systematic 
equation between Protestantism and Ger- 
manism." x It is impossible, says M. 
Goyau, to get away from this intellectual 

1 The appeal of the Protestant theologians of 
Germany to the evangelical Christians outside 
Germany (August 1914) maintains that the war is 

I 



114 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

phenomenon. It is a fact which has to be 
reckoned with, and which history has 
recorded. 

There is a current theory in Germany 
that " Germany, being Protestant, must 
master the Latin races/' Let Balmes and 
Donoso Cortes hold their peace, but let 
the Treitschkes and the Sybels address the 
world, in the name of Germany the omni- 
potent, in order to celebrate the identity 
of the German spirit with Protestantism, in 
order to discover in Protestantism the sign 
and criterion of Germanism, and, there- 
fore, of superiority. Just as the true 
Protestantism could not exist save in Ger- 
many, in the eyes of these apologists of 
Prussia, Germany is not German unless 
" reformed." 

These assertions, no less insulting to the 
Protestants without the Empire than to 
the Catholics within it, are to be found, 
implied or expressed, in all the more noisy 
manifestations of Prussianism. It was 
Bunsen, a diplomatist of the King of 

being waged by the Allies against Germanism and 
Protestantism simultaneous^, the two " isms " being 
homogeneous. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 115 

Prussia, who, by dint of terrible threats 
against the " Antichrist/ ' founded the 
first evangelical chapel in Rome, close to 
the Vatican ; and it was Wilhelm II who 
in 1898 led to Jerusalem that famous 
Lutheran crusade which was intended to 
glorify " the pure Gospel " in the very 
places of its birth. 

The Kaiser said, in plain German : "It 
is the turn of Luther to represent Christi- 
anity in Palestine. He alone can make 
Islam respect it." It was the same in 
Madrid, where the evangelical propaganda 
of the Fliedners and the Rupperts was 
directed against the Latin culture of Spain 
no less than against the traditional Catholi- 
cism. In Austria similar phenomena have 
been observed. It was in the name of 
Germanism that the cry of Los von Rom 
was raised. " The Emperor Wilhelm II, 
the final instigator of this hunt for souls, 
was enabled, at the end of 1903, to hear the 
joyful news that more than 20,000 Austrian 
minds had resolved to perform this supreme 
act of Germanism : to emigrate from the 
Roman Church to the Evangelical Church/ ' 
In the eyes of all "good Germans'' 



116 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

Catholicism is a " political heresy/' to be 
expelled from Central Europe. 

Such is the " confessional hue " of 
Germanic Kultur. But it is only a shade, 
and a superficial one. The love of religion 
occupies only the second place amid the 
preoccupations of the Pan-Germanists, who 
are less believers than sectarians. Sceptics 
in religion, the Pan-Germanists regard 
Protestantism as a political instrument, 
and for them " the problem is to make 
a confession of Germanic origin prevail 
over the Catholicism of the Latin 
races/' 

If we look deep into their minds, we 
easily perceive therein an antichristianism 
which may be conscious or unconscious, 
but which is always palpable and always 
active. Indeed, the very principles of 
Germanism — for which the supreme good 
is " the universal advent of the Germanic 
ideal" — are incompatible with Christianity, 
which knows no moral law but that of good 
and evil. The Germanists and Pan-Ger- 
manists know better than this. 

M. Goyau here summarises, for his own 
ends, the unassailable theory advanced by 



PAN-GERMANISM o. CHRISTENDOM 117 

M. Boutroux, 1 who, analysing the meta- 
physical procedures of Germanism, which 
were brought almost to their final point 
by Hegel, sees in them a negation of all 
morality in favour of the progress and 
ascent of Germanism. The Good is Ger- 
manism ; Germanism is Progress. To work 
for Germanism is to accomplish the virtuous 
action par excellence. To rebel against its 
hegemony is to do evil. For Germanism in 
process of growth is nothing else than the 
progressive revelation of the Divine, and its 
stages mark the highway of God. Hence, 
all is permitted, all, absolutely all, against 
the enemies of the German name, who are 
the enemies of God. Divinity is justified of 
itself, and there is nothing optional where 
the Supreme Cause is acting and evolving. 
In such a system the intelligence makes 
room for the will, which very soon dis- 
appears in its turn, making way for instinct 
and appetite. To expand in her might, 
to complete her consciousness at all costs, 

1 See the analysis given by Le Croix for October 29, 
1914, of M. Boutroux's important article on L'Alle- 
magne et la Guerre, first published in the Revue des 
Deux Monies, and then in book form. 



118 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

such is the sole duty of Germany, blessed 
by the "old German God/' the sym- 
pathetic spectator of the havoc which 
magnifies Him and incarnates Him, since it 
makes His place in the sun the greater. It 
is He. He is It. Away with the image of 
the Christian God, the personal, sovereign 
Judge, the sovereign dispenser of rewards 
and punishments, based upon merit and 
demerit ! Nothing is left but an anonymous 
and elementary force, whose presence and 
control are betrayed by success, no matter 
by what means obtained. It would be 
impossible to get further away from the 
Gospel. The Chosen Race has only to carry 
out its own precepts. It is its own doctrine. 
The strongest is also the most just. 

Having attained this point of develop- 
ment, Germanic thought, falling back more 
and more upon its original data, abandons 
all dealings with Holy Writ. Even the 
most mysterious and terrible pages of the 
Old Testament cease to interest it. It aban- 
dons the practice of tormenting Hebrew 
texts in order to wring blood and violence 
from them, and returns to its indigenous 
Paganism, to the veritable " old German 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 119 

gods," to Thor and Wotan, those most 
authentic incarnations of the brutal dream 
of the Germanic race. It was in their 
name, indeed, that Germanism first began 
to fill the world with terror. They were 
the earliest historical manifestation of 
Germanism, and they will continue to 
inspire its great movements. " Certain 
Pan-Germanists have learned once more 
to prostrate themselves before the myths 
of ancient Germany. . . . They are organis- 
ing a nationalist propaganda in favour of 
the old Germanic cults, and in honour of 
these cults they are founding reviews, 
newspapers, and pedagogical journals ; they 
make an emphatic display of reviving the 
celebration of the solstice on the summits 
of the Tyrolean Alps ; they urge the German 
people to replant the old sacred trees, 
long ago felled by St. Boniface. For these 
adventurous harbingers of Germanism the 
very Christian era must be abrogated, and 
the point of departure of their calendar is no 
longer the birth of the Redeemer, but the 
Battle of Norcia, fought in the year 113 B.C., 
between the Teutons and the Romans." 
***** 



120 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

II 

From Catholicism to Pan-Germanism 

Such is the cultural environment in 
which the German Catholic Centre has been 
forced to evolve and to win itself a place. 
No environment could be more refractory 
to Catholicism, and it is not astonishing 
that in the second year of its constitution 
the Catholic Centre, with the Catholic 
Church itself, was cruelly persecuted by 
the Protestant majority of the German 
people. What is so surprising — and, for 
Catholicism, so scandalous — is that the 
Centre is to-day sharing in the intoxications 
and ferocities of Kultur. 

How is it that a great and noble party 
has fallen so low as to celebrate perjury as 
an exploit and assassination as a military 
necessity; as to be silent when it should 
speak and to go on speaking when silence 
is its only refuge ? 

How is it that the Catholic Centre, once 
persecuted by Kultur, has now become its 
most servile ally in the new war of Kultur, 
the new Kulturkampf, so similar, save in 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 121 

extent and the plane of development, to 
that which it suffered and in which it was 
victorious ? 

Ah, how far away are those heroic days 
when Mallinckrodt, the Reichenspergers, 
Savigny and Windthorst defended the 
liberties of the Christian people against 
the violence of Bismarck ! And their 
successors are equipping the pseudo-Bis- 
marckian corsairs of to-day ! 

It seems that the point when this 
evolution began to turn downward to 
decadence must be placed about 1900. 
Until that date the type of the " man of 
the Centre/' was the venerable Windthorst, 
the protector of all the " particularisms " 
of Germany, the apologist of all respectable 
liberties, the armed champion of the most 
just against the most powerful. Between 
1871 and 1878 these admirable followers of 
Windthorst were seen to sustain the most 
formidable struggle against the most for- 
midable of adversaries, and to win the 
day. 

As almost always, success led to corrup- 
tion. A new type of the " man of the 
Centre " appeared, and was soon won over 



122 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

to Kultur by political compromises. The 
Windthorst type, the Guelf provincial, the 
man of the opposition, was followed by men 
like Lieber, 1 the President of the Parlia- 
mentary Commission on the Civil Code. 
The elaboration of a new Civil Code for the 
whole Empire 2 (1900) was a radical work 
of unification, pre-eminently antipathetic 
to the spirit of the heroic Centre, which was 
particularist and militant. It was also a 
work of Germanisation, a Pan-Germanist 
measure, as was very soon to be seen. 
There is a curious little pamphlet in exist- 
ence which deals with the foundation of 
the Kingdom of Prussia, and which is 
prefaced by Lieber. Its date is 1901, and 
its preface is quite symbolical. The new 
" man of the Centre/' Lieber, took the side 

1 Lieber, it will be remembered, was the first to 
state that war was humane in proportion as it was 
cruel and violent. — B.M. 

2 This Code, completed in 1896, came into force 
in 1900. Before that date different systems of law 
prevailed in different States, and even in different 
provinces. For example, in Alsace-Lorraine the 
Rhine provinces were subject to the French Civil 
Code. It is only fifteen years since the inhabitants 
of the left bank of the Rhine ceased to be subject to 
French law. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 128 

of the Hohenzollerns, unifiers, Germanisers, 
and Protestants. He even attempted to 
subject the past of Catholicism to the 
destinies of Brandenburg, recalling the fact 
that in 1701 two Jesuits had foretold the 
erection of Prussia into a kingdom. 1 

It was henceforth to be the r6le of the 
Centre to place its Catholicism at the 
service of Germanisation and Pan-German- 
ism. Baron von Hertling, the leader of 
the Bavarian Centre, instituted the famous 
anti-French University in Strasbourg. Herr 
Martin Spahn demanded the absorption of 
the Poles by Germany ; that is to say, their 
conversion to Protestantism. 

What else happened ? What, rather, did 
not happen? For ten years we saw the 
German " Centre/' the " sometime Catholic 
Centre," to use an expression of M. Pnim's, 
divided into two camps, with insults on 
their lips and hatred in their hearts. On 
the one hand were austere and pettifogging 
Catholics, by no means anxious to proceed 

1 As a rule one prefers to remember that the 
Papacy solemnly protested against this measure. 
But a German Catholic wishes to hear nothing of 
pontifical decisions, 



124 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

from words to deeds, professing an Ultra- 
montane fidelity, who were presently to 
look to Berlin for leadership, while reproach- 
ing the " Cologne management " for be- 
traying Catholicism and the Church. For 
five years past scandalous expulsions and 
lamentable defections have been afflicting 
this party, formerly so compact. Berlin 
says to Cologne : " You are no longer 
Christians/ ' Cologne replies to Berlin : 
" You are destroying our unity.' ' And the 
Centre rends itself, and rinds no support 
but the Evangelical State which wishes to 
annihilate it. 

We shall take no part in these disputes, 
contenting ourselves with explaining matters 
when the need arises. Both sides have lost 
their original traditions. On the one hand, 
at Cologne, are the official Catholics; on 
the other hand, in Berlin, are the aggressive 
Catholics. This state of affairs has pre- 
vailed for too long. On running through 
the list of the matters put to the vote since 
1855 by the annual German Catholic Con- 
gresses, we find, moreover, that these 
fraternal enemies are less and less concerned 
with Catholicism. About 1855, for ex- 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 125 

ample, an energetic campaign was under- 
taken to endow Germany with a Catholic 
University. She is still waiting for it, but 
no one asks for it any longer, neither 
the " pure " Catholics of Berlin nor the 
" tainted " x Catholics of Cologne. The vic- 
torious Centre, the Governmental party, 
absorbed by miserable squabbles and steeped 
in materialism, prefers the immediate bene- 
fits of power to the future of Catholic 
civilisation. It abandons its young men 
to the German Universities, which are 
peopled by professors who are almost 
entirely Protestant, where Kultur makes 
its adepts while Catholicism loses its vigour. 
Neither the " interconfessionals " of Cologne 
nor the " whole-hoggers " of Berlin have 
anything more to say of this University, 
which was with justice represented as in- 
dispensable sixty years ago, but whose 
supporters, at Congress after Congress, 
have held their peace or dispersed, as ques- 
tions of power, prestige, theoretical economy 
and opportunism have gradually gained a 

1 Cardinal Kopp, Archbishop of Berlin, employed 
this memorable phrase in speaking of the pseudo- 
Catholics of the West. See his letter, p. 151, note. 



126 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

more and more considerable place in the 
soul of the Centre as in its debates. 

The interlocutor selected by M. Prum is 
a perfect example of the new type of the 
"man of the Centre/' Abbe Wetterle, 
who knows him too well, 1 has given a 
masterly description of " this corpulent 
fellow, thick-set, broad-shouldered, chubby 
of face/' a glutton for work, who, to draw 
the attention of the Government to his 
youthful ambitions, began by noisily — and 
successfully — fighting the Chancellor. It 
was he, indeed, who indirectly caused the 
dissolution of the Reichstag in 1906, which 
resulted in the return of a diminished 
Centre, exposed to the snares and am- 
bushes of von Biilow (1907). Since then 
he has made his way, and the Kaiser did 
not hesitate to send this inconvenient 
person, who was roundly accused of venality 
in the lobbies of the Reichstag, to Rome. 2 

1 See France de demain for February 18, 1915. 

2 In his relations with Belgium, which are not 
of recent date, Erzberger, the " Catholic " deputy, 
assumed a particularly cynical attitude. 

" He, who was to introduce the War Budget in 
the Reichstag, made the following statements, pub- 
lished in the Journal de Bruxelles for August 26, 1913, 
to a Belgian, some months before the war. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 127 

We will not say : such is the Centre 
to-day. We will simply say : such is the 

" Herr Erzberger gives us his word of honour, 
making his veracity as a Catholic a case of con- 
science, that even in the most secret communications 
. . . there has never been any question of invading 
Belgium, nor of menacing in any manner the security 
of her territory. . . . Neither the German Govern- 
ment nor the military authorities have in any de- 
gree . . . allowed any infringement whatever of the 
duties imposed upon Germany by treaty to enter 
into their plans. . . . Belgium can always count on 
the faithful sympathies of the German Catholics; 
she can always count on the party of the Centre in 
the Reichstag, which strives to ensure that inter- 
national engagements shall be respected. 

"The war having proved to the entire world" 
(adds the XX e Steele of February 13, 1915) " that 
the invasion of Belgium had been prepared for many 
years in its smallest details, we now know what Herr 
Erzberger's word of honour is worth. 

" With the same audacity of untruthfulness (and 
we shall see from this what Herr Erzberger is worth 
as a Catholic) he declared to the Berlin correspondent 
of the Matin, on the morrow of the Encyclical Pascendi 
(December 29, 1907) that there were no modernists 
in Germany, and that among all the known theo- 
logians there was not a single one who could be counted 
among the modernists as the Encyclical understands 
them. 

" Now the most notorious apostacies and the 
revolts and scandals of all kinds which followed the 
Encyclical Pascendi, and which so deeply grieved 
Pius X to the day of his death, have proved that the 



128 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

majority — or all but the majority — of the 
present Centre. But to understand the 
change from Catholic greatness to Pan- 
Germanist decadence, it is necessary to 
examine this development in detail ; so far 
we have merely sketched its main outlines. 
In order to remain closely in touch with 
M. Priim we shall seek inspiration, in the 
following pages, from such documents, pub- 
lished by the henchmen of the Berliner 
Richtung (the Berlin party " machine "), 
as relate to the evolution of the Centre. 
There is no doubt that M. Prum's German 
sympathies, before the war, were with the 
politicians of Berlin rather than with those 
of Cologne. 

***** 



III 

The Birth, Struggles, Victory and 
Development of the Centre 

The Catholic Centre was born in 1870 
of the Katholische Fraktion, which in 1852 

intellectual Catholicism of Germany is rotten to the 
marrow." — B. Gaudeau, Le danger pour I'Eglise est 
en Allemagne, in La Foi Catholique, April-May 1915. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 129 

was founded in the Prussian Parliament, 
and which survived until 1863. Its real 
aim was to prevent the peril of anti-Catholic 
legislation. Bismarck greatly feared the 
creation of this party ; and even before the 
Reichstag assembled fifty-six members of 
the barely constituted Centre did actually 
repair to Versailles to demand of the new 
Emperor the re-establishment of the tem- 
poral power of the Pope. Bismarck sensed 
in this young and ardent party a force as 
yet uncurbed, which might give him much 
trouble in the future Parliament. He 
regarded it unfavourably. Already the 
Protestant, anti-Catholic forces of Germany 
were in uneasy commotion, and as early as 
1865 the Catholic poet Weber complained : 
' We have entered upon the anti-Christian 
era ; the hatred of every positive creed, and 
especially of the Catholic religion, because 
it is the most positive, is incredibly in- 
tense." x However this may be, the 
National Liberals were already waging a 
desperate though clandestine war against 
the German Catholics, accusing them of 
being favourable to the French, inventing 
1 See Goyau, Bismarck et I'Eglise, vol. L p. 67. 

K 



180 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

or magnifying the most trivial facts which 
might disparage them. Bismarck, however, 
was anxious before all to unify Germany. 
So long as Germany's unity was not on a 
firm foundation, he did not want to annoy 
the Catholics, even though he might perse- 
cute them later in order to " safeguard " 
the completed work. 

Certainly the German victory over France 
electrified the anti-Catholic forces of Ger- 
many. It was in the winter of 1870 that 
the discussions whence the German Centre 
was to emerge took place between Savigny, 
Mallinckrodt, Reichensperger, Windthorst 
and some others. The danger, indeed, 
became more and more theatening. It was 
urgent to guard against it. An appeal was 
published which was extremely successful — 
first at the elections to the Prussian Cham- 
ber, and then at those to the Reichstag, 
when sixty-seven members of the Centre 
were elected. Early in 1871 the newspaper 
Germania was founded in Berlin, as a 
counterpart of the Kblnische Volkszeitung, 
already famous for its ardent defence of 
Catholicism. 

Differing considerably from the Katho- 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 131 

lische Fraktion of 1852, the Centre of 1871 
was not a strictly " confessional " party, 
but was principally political. It is im- 
portant to note this fact, for it was to be 
followed by extraordinary consequences. 
Its enemies, in order to compromise it, 
formed a habit of referring to it as the 
" Catholic Centre," a name which came 
into general use. At all events, it was 
and still is understood — 

(a) That the Centre is the only political 
party which has defended the Catholic 
Church and on which the Church could 
rely. 

(b) That owing to historical circum- 
stances independent of its will, the Centre 
was for many years obliged to concentrate 
its activities upon the religious interests of 
the Catholics, which were threatened and 
violated by the Government. 

(c) That the Centre proposed always to 
conform in its action, whether positive or 
negative, with the dogmatic and moral 
doctrines of the Catholic Church whenever 
such doctrines might be directly or in- 
directly involved in any question which 
was the goal of its Parliamentary action. 



132 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

This was understood, or at all events 
inferred, by the whole Catholic world of 
Germany. The Centre was thus a " con- 
fessional " party in principle, since it de- 
manded of all its members the profession 
of the fundamental truths of Christianity, 
common to the true members of the Church 
and to Protestants, and Catholic, in fact, 
in the sense we have just explained. 1 

As a matter of fact, there are few parties 
known to history which have deserved so 
well of Catholicism as did the German 
Centre when the Kulturkampf began. 

Having vainly attempted to interest 
Pius IX in the anticipated dissolution of 
the Centre, Bismarck allowed matters to 
drift, and the new party to establish itself. 
But little by little, at the same time, he 
allowed the Protestant campaign to grow 
fiercer. Surrounded by extremely anti- 
Catholic friends, Bismarck, as early as 
1871, had come to regard war upon Catho- 

1 See Critique du liber alisme (November 1 and 15, 
191 1) : Hommes et choses de V Allemagne catholique. by 
E. Barbier, cited by the Chronique de la Presse, 
191 1, p. 781. These two publications endorse the 
Berlin side of the Berlin- Cologne dispute, as express- 
ing the grievances of Catholicism itself. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 183 

licism as consistent with the welfare of 
the State, and he immediately commenced 
hostilities. 

Every one has read of those eight years 
of open warfare, during which the Bismarck- 
ian fury gave itself full play, and which 
ended in the victory of the unconquered 
Centre. Every one learned to honour the 
great names of Windthorst, Mallinckrodt, 
Reichensperger, and many another cham- 
pion of Catholicism persecuted by Kultur. 
Not altogether without reason, their Pro- 
testant enemies represented them as the 
enemies of Germanism, and the authors of 
a political heresy. 

However, these complaints were in- 
effectual. Germany soon tired of her own 
fury, and when, in January 1877, the 
elections to the Reichstag took place, the 
Centre emerged victorious with ninety-three 
seats. The National Liberals lost twenty- 
five seats. Bismarck understood the lesson 
taught him by Catholics faithful to the 
Pope, and a year later he went full speed 
astern. The heroic period was over. 

Then, for the Centre, a new era com- 
menced. It was to be characterised, at 



134 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

first, by victory undisputed; by accession 
to the councils of the Government; by 
accession to power also, if only to a 
secondary place; and by the development 
of social laws. At the same time the 
founders of the party, the repositories of 
its heroism and its traditions, were about 
to disappear, one after another, and to be 
replaced by a new generation. 

Solidly established in their citadel, having 
at their disposal a hundred seats, from 
which nothing could expel them — not even 
the temporary hostility of Prince von 
Biilow in 1907— the men of the Centre 
were often to become the arbiters of the 
political situation. Victorious, they were 
about to claim full scope for their social 
activities. 

It was thus that in 1890 the Volksverein 

(People's Union) was founded, a veritable 

league of propaganda for " Christian Social " 

reforms. 1 This admirable organisation has 

often been described. Its centre is at 

Miinchen-Gladbach, near Cologne, and it 

has some 700,000 members. The Volks- 

1 See M. Ta vernier in Le Cones fondant of April 10, 
1906. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 135 

verein finds its feminine counterpart in the 
Katholische Frauenbund, the " Union of 
Catholic Women/' the central offices of 
which are in Cologne. From the Syndi- 
calist or Trades Unionist point of view the 
great " Centrist " organisation is that of 
the " Christian Syndicates " or " Christian 
Guilds/ ' founded in 1894, of which we 
shall have more to say later, and which, 
with their 450,000 members, are dependent 
upon Cologne and are under its orders. 

Each of these groups possesses numerous 
newspapers, reviews, bulletins, etc., which 
have sprung up since 1878. 

We have seen how the particularism and, 
in the best sense of the word, the Liberal 
Centre, was Pan-Germanised by its acces- 
sion to the political control of the Empire. 
This was about 1900. Politics was not 
solely responsible for this development ; the 
Centre contained internal factors of change, 
which we must pass in review. Thanks to 
these, Kultur gained the ascendancy over 
its will. This is an emphatic expression; 
yet it is difficult to employ any other, 
when we see, on the one hand, the ruling 
ideas of the Catholic leaders inclining to 



136 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

the side of pure force and Protestantism, 
and permitting the doctrines of force an 
ever greater part in their social activities; 
while, on the other hand, in the political 
domain, the part of the clergy grows ever 
smaller, and that of the Protestant members 
ever greater and greater. 

And this is what has happened; not 
without conflicts, not without protests. 

?f» ?> PfC ?f» 3j! 



IV 

" interconfessionalism " and the 
" Christian Guilds " 

Perhaps, to be quite exact, we ought to 
date the remote beginning of this move- 
ment of decadence from 1894. For in 1894 
those " mixed or Christian Guilds " were 
founded which have been the cause of so 
many quarrels between Berlin and Cologne. 
The object of constituting these societies 
was to fight Socialism. 1 How did their 
founders go to work ? 

1 I have it from a sure source that the constitution 
of the " Christian Guilds " was undertaken at the 
express request of the Kaiser. The successive elec- 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 137 

"Like the Socialist Trades Unions, the 
Christian Guilds were to concern them- 

tions to the Reichstag of 1871, 1874, 1877 1878 
1881, 1884, 1887, 1890 and 1893, showed an in- 
cessant increase of Socialist votes (119,386 in 1871 
1,780,989 in 1893 : see Entwicklung der Sozialdemo- 
kratie, by Th. Wacker, Fribourg, 1903). Wilhelm II 
was greatly alarmed. He deputed one of his con- 
fidants to interview the " men of the Centre " who 
were already almost won over, and to beg them to 
support him in his struggle against Socialism. Such 
was the Imperial origin of the " Christian Labour 
guilds. According to the instructions of the 
Kaiser himself, it was a matter of "saving the 
Empire." Knowing this, it is easier to understand 
not only the character of these societies, but the 
entire social activity of the Centre. This activity 
was less a sincere social or religious policy than 
a political machination. It is safe to assert that 
under the personal influence of Wilhelm II the 
Centre was very soon no more than one of the numerous 
organs of Pan-Germanism. It played its part in the 
orchestra of these energumens, and that was all 
And this was soon visible in Parliament, where the 
more legitimate Catholic opposition gradually and 
wilfully relinquished all its influence. 

For example, in 1912, at a moment when the 
Chancellor, who had been recently defeated by a 
hostile vote in the Reichstag, could not have re- 
sisted a second blow, Baron von Hertling changed 
the interpellation concerning the Jesuits, which he 
had notified, for a question, so that the Chamber did 
not proceed to a vote. This vote would have put 
the Government in the minority, and although the 



138 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

selves with questions of labour and wages, 
and to endeavour to obtain, from the 
employers, the best possible conditions for 
the workers; but they were not supposed 
to meddle with the moral or religious 
organisation of the workers, as this, it was 
pretended, was to be left to the ' con- 
fessional ' Working-men's Clubs, whether 
Protestant or Catholic. These Christian 
Labour Guilds promised to respect the 
religious opinions of their members, but 
they always professed to be independent 
of all ecclesiastical authority, so that any 
positive Church influence was impossible 
from the first. 

" Very soon the Volksverein of Catholic 
Germany and most of the Catholic journals 
made a general rule of this double organisa- 

German system of government is not really Parlia- 
mentary, this fresh manifestation of the disagreement 
between the Reichstag and the Chancellor must have 
had the most disturbing consequences. 

As docile servants of the Kings of Prussia the 
deputies of the Centre sacrificed their most essential 
claims in order not to displease the Kaiser. At the 
same time they were able to plume themselves before 
the worthy Catholic elector, who knew nothing of 
these wheels within wheels, on their praiseworthy 
activity in the cause of religion. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 139 

tion of the workers, and this example was 
gradually followed by all the great Catholic 
organisations, and even by their general 
assemblies/' x 

We know that a great material success 
resulted from this policy, but it is to be 
doubted if the moral and religious benefit 
was equally great. 

" One of the warmest supporters of the 
' Christian Guilds/ who is at the same time 
one of the leaders of the Centre — Dr. Karl 
Bachem — took it upon himself to enlighten 
us as to the value and meaning of the 
word ' Christian ' in the title and the 
doctrine of the ' interconfessional ' Guilds. 
* The word Christian/ says Dr. Bachem, 
' is a formula which has no dogmatic mean- 
ing ; it is a purely political label, intended 
to render possible the collaboration of 
Catholics and Protestants in the economic 
domain/ So the principal purpose of the 
word is to signify the fact that in those 
Guilds which bear this label the members 
are not molested on account of their 

1 Questions actuelles , January n, 1913 : VEncy clique 
' Singulari quadam ' et la question des Syndicats 
chrdtiens en Allemagne. 



140 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

religious convictions, as occurs every day 
in the Socialist Unions." 1 

The result obtained was therefore princi- 
pally negative, and the organisation was 
really " neutralist/' But this " neutral- 
ism " was only a phrase; and very soon it 
became necessary to take sides. This opera- 
tion did not come about by itself. It is 
not yet terminated. 

In the matter of strikes the attitude of 
the Christian Guilds differs in no way from 
that of the Socialist Unions. Both use the 
strike as"a normal means of imposing upon 
capital ever-increasing ameliorations in 
favour of labour/' 2 without troubling over- 
much as to the justice or injustice of each 
operation. As will be seen, the ideal of 
force, pure and simple, so sympathetic 
to Kultur and " Germanism," has been 
swallowed whole. 

We will cite only this one typical example 
to show that Catholicism was not able 

1 Questions actuelles, December 9, 1911 : " The 
Catholic Labour Movement in Germany" (an article 
in the Fribourg Freiheit). 

2 Critique du liberalisme (Chronique de la Presse, 
1911, p. 767). 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 141 

to extend its unconditional patronage to 
societies so " Germanic " as these Guilds. 
In 1 910 there was published in Berlin a 
volume by the Abt Windulph, of Berlin, 
entitled Christianity and the Christian 
Guilds. In this work, which was objective 
in character, and well " documented/' the 
strongest objections were advanced against 
these doubtfully Catholic Guilds. As early 
as 1899, he tells us, the problem had at- 
tained such dimensions that a Congress met 
at Mayence in order to solve it by plainly 
specifying, in its first resolution, that " the 
Guilds must be interconfessional, that is, 
must admit adherents of both confessions, 
but would take their stand on the basis of 
Christianity." 

Has this object been achieved? Herr 
Windulph replies in the negative; and 
merely by consulting the alphabetical index 
to the volume we shall obtain some idea 
of the general complaints which may be 
made against the Christliche Gewerkschaften. 
Opening the volume at hazard, we find that 
the Christian Guilds " no longer abide by 
the Mayence programme " ; that they are 
" fighting organisations " ; that they " care 



142 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

nothing for the religious convictions of 
their members " ; that the qualification 
of " Christians " is a " mere label " ; that 
they have often taken up a position " in 
opposition to the episcopate " ; that they 
" foment class hatred " ; that they asso- 
ciate "with the Socialists in their revolu- 
tionary policy/' etc., etc. ; all these allega- 
tions being supported by references which 
are generally conclusive. 

" This simple examination enables us to 
detach three fundamental defects which 
are perceptible in these Christian Guilds: 
their minimisation of dogma, their com- 
pounding with Socialism, and their indiffer- 
ence as regards ecclesiastical authority." 1 

Ecclesiastical authority, however, inter- 
vened with energy as early as 1900. 

" In that year the Conference of the 
Prussian Bishops, held at Fulda, dealt with 
the social question, and in a pastoral 
letter, since known as the Fulda Pastoral, 

1 See Le Croix of December 28, 1910 : Catholi- 
cisme et inter cow fessionalisme en Allemagne, cited in 
the Chronique de la Presse, 1910, p. 784. A complete 
translation of this famous Pastoral Letter will be 
found in Questions actuelles, vol. lvii. pp. 34-41. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 143 

called for labour organisation which should 
be strictly and openly Catholic.' ' 

The Bishops were so indignant with the 
attitude of the Christian Guilds that they 
wanted to suppress them, and renounced 
the idea only in the face of the fiery pro- 
tests of the Catholic newspapers of Cologne. 

The Kdlnische Volkszeitung in particular, 
being an organ of the Centre, sided openly 
with the Guilds, and continued to protect 
them. The Bishops confined themselves 
to recalling the principles violated by the 
Christian Labour Guilds, and made up 
their minds to tolerate the latter. The 
members of the Guilds, being good electors, 
aware of the value of their assistance, 
failed to abandon the error of their 
ways. 

" In 1901, at the Congress of Crefeld, 
the Guilds refused to impose on their 
members the obligation to recognise the 
positive principles of Christianity.' ' 

As M. Giesberts said : " It is impossible 
that the Catholic and Protestant members 
of a Guild should be forced by the statutes 
to recognise the positive principles of 
Christianity, since, in the two confessions, 



144 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

these principles are partly in direct opposi- 
tion, and all are founded on a different 
religious basis/' 

" We might cite a number of similar 
Labour declarations; for certain leaders 
of the Christian movement have been 
prodigal of them, and in order to evade 
the supervision of the ecclesiastical authori- 
ties they continually assert that their object 
is exclusively economic, and, so to speak, 
amoral." 1 

In 1904 the Bishops, once more assembled 
at Fulda, again expressed their censure of 
these refractory Guilds. But nothing came 
of it. 

" Their recalcitrant attitude in the face 
of the episcopal instructions was again 
startlingly exemplified at the International 
Trades Union Congress held at Zurich in 
1900. It was there that a Labour secre- 
tary, Herr Fischer, uttered his famous 
apostrophe : ■ My Lord the Bishops/ 
he said, 'thus far and no farther! It is 
your right and your duty to show us the 
way in religious and ecclesiastical matters, 

1 Questions actuelles, December 9, 191 1 : Le tnouve- 
ment ouvrier catholique en Allemagne. 



PAN-GERMANISM p. CHRISTENDOM 145 

but when it is a question of purely secular 
affairs no Bishop has the right to speak to 
us with authority ! ' " l 

However, it was necessary to interpret 
the Encyclical Rerum novarum of Leo XIII. 
" Far from regretting these irreverent 
words, or extenuating them by its commen- 
taries, the Press of the Christian Guilds 
congratulated itself on the declarations 
made at Zurich, and even surpassed 
them. It was stated that the ' colleagues ' 
had at last found the mot juste in respect 
of the exaggerations of ecclesiastical 
authority. ' Neither the Pope nor the 
Bishops have the right/ said one news- 
paper, ■ to meddle in questions of economics, 
or to prescribe certain forms of organisa- 
tion for the workers/ ' The clergy/ wrote 
another journal, ' has no right to interfere 
in economic questions/ ' In economic 
matters/ wrote a third defender of the 
Christian Guilds, ' we recognise neither the 
authority of the Pope nor that of the 
Bishops; we are our own authority' " 2 

Hegel could not have found a better 
expression of victorious Germanism. 
1 Questions actuelles, op. cit. 2 Ibid. 



146 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

Despairing of converting these bar- 
barians to reason, certain Bishops were 
subsequently in favour of the creation of 
professional and confessional Unions, purely 
Catholic, which should be managed from 
Berlin. They formed diocesan leagues, and 
worked not only for the material welfare 
of their members, but for their religious 
progress. Unhappily these Unions, almost 
disowned by the Centre and furiously 
opposed by the " Christian " Guilds, were 
not able to develop with any energy. They 
form only a small minority. Force and 
arrogance are on the side of the " mixed " 
Unions. 

These latter take advantage of and abuse 
their position. In spite of the repeated 
favours which the Christian Guilds received 
at the hands of the Bishops, notably in 
1910, when a fresh Conference was held at 
Fulda, they savagely declared war upon 
the Bishops, refusing to negotiate with 
them, and supporting the Socialists against 
them, trying to starve them out, and 
accusing them of hyper-Catholicism. 

The Pope gave his verdict in the matter. 
In the Encyclical Singulari quadam (Sept. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 147 

24, 1912) he expressed his preference for 
the absolutely Catholic Unions, and, while 
condemning the purely economic motives 
of the " Christian " Guilds, and issuing a 
definite order for the creation of purely 
Catholic Unions wherever this might be 
possible, he " tolerated/' for the time being, 
the " Christian " Guilds. 

This Encyclical was followed by skilful 
commentaries on the part of almost the 
whole of the " Centrist " Press, which 
endeavoured to prove that the " Christian " 
Guilds had not in any way been censured, 
and that the status quo ante still obtained ! 
These newspapers even taxed themselves to 
publish a species of counter-encyclicals. At 
a meeting held at Fribourg in Brisgau, on 
November 22, Father Wacker, the leader 
of the Baden Centre, 1 ventured to declare 
that " the Encyclical was not one of those 
decisions of the supreme authority of the 
Church which imply the obligation to 
believe/' On November 23 Herr Trim- 
born, leader of the Rheinland Centre, at a 
party meeting held in Cologne, declared, 

1 Placed on the index in 1914 on account of a 
doctrinal work. 



148 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

among other things: " There can be abso- 
lutely no question of sacrificing the Christian 
Guilds. I have no doubt that the Christian 
Guilds will quietly, resolutely, and firmly 
keep to the line of conduct hitherto fol- 
lowed, and that all those who are interested 
in the Christian and National movement, 
that is to say, all our people, wish for the 
utmost success of the Christian Guilds, in 
the future as in the past. In the competi- 
tion of labour organisations the decisive 
and final factor is practice, for which reason 
I have no doubt that the Christian Guilds 
will retain the foremost place, and that the 
future belongs to them." x 

This is the purest " Germanism/' 

Matters were still very much in this 
condition at the moment when the war 
broke out. The Centre, formerly the adver- 
sary of the German State in its defence of 
Catholic liberties, has come almost openly 
to oppose the pontifical and episcopal 
control of Catholicism; this for national 
and economic reasons and reasons of necessity. 

But it has not reached this point without 
scission. The majority, recruited from the 

1 Questions actuelles, January n, 1913, p. 43. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 149 

so-called Cologne Guilds, remain faithful 
to what we are obliged to call economic 
Germanism. The minority, faithful to 
their religious traditions, look to Berlin 
for their watchword. 1 For the last ten 
years, therefore, the German Catholics have 
thus been divided under two " manage- 
ments " or leaderships; the Cologne 
management, which represents the ex- 
panded Centre, acting in association with 
the Protestants, rebellious against the in- 
structions of the Church, and eager before 
all else to exploit an electoral position which 
it has not won, but which it intends at all 
costs to retain ; and the Berlin management, 
which considers itself truly Catholic, is 
obedient to the Holy See, and is devoted 
to the eternal interests of religion and 
the Church. The Berlin party is only a 
minority, and a minority often persecuted, 
as we have seen and shall presently see 
again. In vain, with the late Cardinal 
Kopp, did they denounce "the corruption 

1 Berlin and Cologne are symbols rather than 
realities. Many of the " Berlin " leaders live in 
Cologne, Coblentz, or Treves, Some of the ' ' Cologne " 
leaders operate in Berlin. 



150 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

of Cologne " ; * Cologne remains the mis- 

1 In connection with this expression, which caused 
some sensation, I will refer the reader to Le Croix 
for October 15, 1910 (quoted by the Chronique de la 
Presse, 1910, p. 706). 

The review Hochland (a Cologne publication) con- 
tained in November 1909, an article by Dr. Martin 
Spahn, one of those " men of the Centre " who are 
more particularly determined to " interconfessional- 
ise " the party, and to make it lose all its religious 
characteristics. In this article Dr. Spahn, speaking 
of the League of Catholic Women (Katholisches 
Frauenbund), expressed a desire that this society 
should help to free the Catholics from " clerical 
pressure," and allowed it to be understood that it 
was doing so. The Frauenbund protested vigorously 
(December 4, 1909), asserting "its obedience to the 
ecclesiastical authorities." Moreover, a lady men- 
tioned in Cardinal Kopp's letter as Frau N 

drew up for the latter a report of some length, in- 
tended to allay the suspicions which had been aroused 
as to the Frauenbund. It was on this occasion that 
the Cardinal, on January 12, 1910, sent to Frau 
Schalscha, the President of the Union of the Catholic 
Guilds of women and girls employed in German 
industries, a confidential letter, in which the tendency 
to " interconfessionalism " displayed by a section of 
the German Catholics was severely condemned. 

The letter was confidential, but was intended to 
be shown to a small number of persons who were 
regarded as safe. This explains the absolute char- 
acter of its expressions. By the most deplorable 
indiscretion it was published, and reproduced by the 
Berliner Tageblatt for October 8, 1914, in the hope 
of creating political and religious difficulties in the 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 151 

tress of the Centre, if we can grace by the 

same name the group founded by Windt- 

German Centre, which was already divided on this 
point. Let us see what the Cardinal — whose authority 
was considerable — had to say. In order to under- 
stand the following passage, the reader must be aware 
of the existence of the two women's societies men- 
tioned therein : the Frauenbund of Cologne, suspected 
of " interconfessionalism," and the Catholic Union 
of Women Industrial Operatives, of Berlin, of which 
Frau Schalscha is the President — 

" What pleases me least in the report (submitted 

by Frau N ) is the bitter criticisms addressed to 

the Women's Industrial Unions of Berlin. For a long 
time I have striven to protect the Women's Industrial 
Unions of Berlin, as those of Breslau, from the 
infection of the West. Already, it seems to me, the 
interconfessionalism of the Labour Movement is too 
prevalent, and to introduce it among the female 
workers would provoke a dilution of the Catholic 
conscience throughout the whole of the working 
classes. This is why I wished the Women's Industrial 
Unions to be definitely Catholic. If they are not 
willing to be Catholic let them cease to call them- 
selves Catholic, let them cease to pass as being 
Catholic. This is the case with the Berlin societies. 

" How is the West affecting this organisation? 
Out of pure opportunism, merely to increase the 
strength of the ' interconfessional ' Unions, it was 
driven in the direction of the Guilds. What is the 
attitude of the Frauenbund? Does it favour this 
movement ? Does it approve of it and patronise it ? 
This, alas ! is a question which is not yet cleared up. 
How far the Frauenbund has taken the part of the 
interconfessional movement we have, quite recently 



152 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

horst and von Ketteler and that which 
exists to-day, affording unconditional sup- 
again, read in statements intended for the public. 
What has the Frauenbund done to cleanse itself from 
this suspicion ? Its declarations in respect of Spahn's 
assertion are more than regrettable ; they constitute 
an admission, and only the foolish will seek to conceal 
the evil which has been laid bare. And in the West 
they are still asking for our confidence ! We want 
to keep our hands and our consciences clean. We 
will not contribute to the stifling of Catholic feeling. 
We will not feed the workers, whether male or female, 
on class hatred, nor do we wish to prepare them for 
class conflicts or for violence, in order to drive them 
into Socialism. 

"Does not Frau N read the newspapers? 

Has she not read what Herr Effert, the secretary of 
the Christian Guild, said recently? Even for the 
Socialists this sincerity was exaggerated. 

" Such is the position of affairs, and such is the 
criterion by which we judge what comes to us from 
the West. I see it always in its true character. 
Once more, in the autumn of last year (1909), I at- 
tempted to effect at least an external reconciliation. 
Everything failed before the truly heretical fanaticism 
which prevails in the West on the subject of the social 
problem. The West does not want our confidence. 
It is sufficiently prudent to put its ideas into practice 
at home. Wherever I am responsible I shall do my 
utmost to keep it at a distance. As for my confidence, 
I can give it neither to the principles nor to the tactics 
of the West." 

The gravity of such assertions escaped no one. 
Germania shows that Cardinal Kopp was not alone 
in complaining of the " interconfessional " tendencies 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 153 

port to every violation of justice and all the 
coalitions of violence. 

It is not only in connection with social 
questions that the Catholic decadence of 
the Centre asserts and exposes itself. The 
very principle of the party, its raison 
d'Ure, and its originality are questioned 
by its more active leaders. Of old the 
Centre fought and suffered for the salva- 
tion of German Catholicism. For more 
than fifteen years its new leaders have 
sought to employ it, for what ? To decleri- 
calise Catholic Germany. The Centre has 
become, so to speak, an ally of Protestant- 
ism against Catholicism. There is the 
result of its penetration by Kultur. The 
process deserves to be examined in greater 
detail. 



of Catholic Germany. It cites certain passages of 
Cardinal Fischer's last Pastoral Letter (he is since 
dead and has been replaced in the See of Cologne by 
Cardinal von Hartmann). In this he deplores the 
ravages of interconfessionalism. " Do not let us 
blush at the title of Catholic/' says the Archbishop 
of Cologne; " do not let us avoid it." 



154 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 



The Declericausation of the Centre 

We have carefully explained that in 
its very origin the Centre, composed of 
Catholics, was not strictly a Catholic party. 
This position, not so much ambiguous as 
inconvenient, was bound to become un- 
tenable as soon as the leaders should show 
signs of being actuated by the spirit which 
we have already seen as prevailing in the 
Guild disputes. 

Social problems led to violent and regret- 
table discussions in the once united and 
prosperous Centre, and almost at the same 
time a violent and still more significant 
political and religious quarrel broke out, 
which shook it to its very principles and 
foundations. 

A new generation, which had played no 
part in the glorious battles of the Kultur- 
kampf, eager before all for tangible and 
material success in the political domain, 
commenced in 1900 to put forward a 
series of audacious claims which aimed at 
nothing else than the subordination of the 
Centre to purely temporal ends, at the risk 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 155 

— which was recklessly accepted — of caus- 
ing it to lose all religious individuality. 
The more active leaders of the party even 
maintained energetically that the Centre 
ought to take part in a campaign directed 
against the ascendancy of the Catholic 
hierarchy. Having become the ally of 
Kultur, it was now the mission of the 
Centre to combat Ultramontanism, to 
" declericalise " Catholic Germany, and to 
make the party more and more " intercon- 
fessional." Here again, despite the most 
legitimate protests, this tendency finally 
prevailed, and the traditional representa- 
tives of the party had to make way for the 
usurpers. 

One man, Herr Martin Spahn, played a 
capital part in this development. M. Priirn 
names him expressly as one of the factors 
for evil which he deplores. Who, then, 
is this Herr Dr. Spahn ? 

" Herr Martin Spahn, son of Herr Peter 
Spahn, leader of the Prussian Centre, had 
for some time drawn attention to himself 
by a number of historical or political works 
which displayed a spirit of profound dis- 
dain of and sullen hostility toward Catholi- 



156 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

cism. In his doctor's thesis, and above all 
in his monograph on Johannes Cochlaeus, 
he speaks with enthusiasm of the " Re- 
former/' whom he calls " the greatest 
German of his time/' x 

Professor in the University of Stras- 
bourg, Dr. Spahn made the most unexpected 
use of his authority. " As early as 1898 
he offered his collaboration to the apostate 
Graf von Hoensbroech, an ex-Jesuit, then 
the director of the Tagliche Rundschau, in 
his struggle against ' Ultramontanism in 
Catholicism/ " 

In 1913, in the Viennese review Die 
Fackel, he published an article which 
attained some notoriety, in which he main- 
tained that " Catholicism and Protestant- 
ism are of equal value/' that " the one 
admirably completes the other," and that 
they ought to form close understanding 
with one another. This was not his only 
digression. Since 1913 Dr. Spahn has at 
intervals proclaimed the necessity of " de- 
clericalising " the political, social, and liter- 
ary movements of the German Catholics : 

1 Critique du liberalisme (Chronique de la Presse, 
1911, p. 794). 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 157 

that is, the party of the Centre, the Volks- 
verein, the Frauenbund, the Christian Labour 
Guilds, and the Hochland. His by no 
means respectful biography of Leo XIII 
will be remembered. Above all, he has 
often made the most disconcerting pro- 
posals in respect of questions vital to the 
policy of the Centre. He pleaded for 
resignation as regards the religious aspect 
of the educational question; while as for 
the Polish problem he was in favour of 
the absorption of the Poles by the German 
mass. 

All these precedents, which show Dr. 
Spahn in open and systematic opposition 
to the feelings and even the faith of the 
Catholics, did not prevent him from pre- 
senting himself as deputy to the electoral 
ward of Warburg-Hoexter (Westphalia), 
when it was necessary to find a " Centrist " 
candidate to replace the defunct Herr 
Schmitz in the Reichstag. 

Dr. Spahn's candidature excited a pain- 
ful sense of amazement in many Catholics, 
and among the " Centrist '■ deputies in the 
Reichstag. Fourteen of the latter addressed 
a letter to Dr. Spahn, dated August 22, 



158 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

1910, in which they invited him to with- 
draw his candidature. This letter was 
much criticised in Cologne; the Cologne 
" Centrists " were evidently greatly in- 
terested in the presence of Dr. Spahn in 
the Reichstag. And it was a fact that 
"interconfessionalism" (or actually "acon- 
fessionalism"), democratic Liberalism and 
anti-Romanism found a perfect repre- 
sentative in Dr. Spahn. 

" Dr. Spahn understood all this only too 
well; and he would not desist. He was 
elected according to orders, but by 4000 
votes less than his predecessor. 

" He was yet to be officially admitted 
to the Centre. A strong opposition de- 
clared itself among the truly Catholic 
deputies; they could not endure the idea 
of such an addition to their ranks, which 
by the very force of things ratified a 
provocation and an affront to Rome and 
to Catholic Germany/' 1 

The " Cologne management " did every- 
thing to ensure the success of its candidate. 
The Vatican was dealt with, and uneasy 

1 Critique du liberalisme (Chronique de la Presse f 

191 1, p. 794)- 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 159 

consciences were reassured. The Centre 
assembled in November 1910 to deliberate 
upon the admission of Dr. Martin Spahn. 
A lively discussion ensued. Graf Oppers- 
dorff vigorously opposed it; among those 
who pleaded no less warmly for his admis- 
sion were Mgr. Hitze of the Volksverein, 
Mgr. Fahrenbach, Herr Bachem, director 
of the Kblnische Volkszeitung, and Herr 
von Hertling, leader of the Bavarian Centre. 
This last " announced that the Chairman 
had thoroughly considered the question of 
Dr. Spahn's admission; that Dr. Spahn 
declared himself in favour of the confes- 
sional school; that he refused to recognise 
as truly his the opinions attributed to him 
by Die Fackel; finally, that he regretted his 
relations with Hoensbroech, since they had 
shocked the Catholics. In consequence, the 
Chairman was in favour of Dr. Spahn's 
admission ." 

" However, by a cunning calculation, 
in order to allay excitement and lull suspi- 
cion, it was proposed that Dr. Spahn 
should be induced to sign a declaration of 
orthodoxy. His friends drafted it; he 
appended his signature. He had been 



160 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

promised that it should not be published. 
But his supporters wished to be able to 
inform Rome that he had given the 
desired guarantees. The pill hardly swal- 
lowed (according to Dr. Spahn's admission), 
Rome and the Romans were enabled to 
read in the newspapers that Dr. Spahn, 
in an interview, declared that he had 
retracted nothing. A fresh alarm. The 
Centre assembled and declared that it 
regarded these declarations of Dr. Spahn's 
as null and void. And all was well again 
. . . according to the ideas of Cologne." 1 

Such is the explanation of the facts as 
set forth by Berlin. For we hasten to 
remark that the objectivity of this state- 
ment is perhaps only comparative. A 
" man of Cologne " would accuse it of 
"Berlin subjectivism/' A "man of 
Berlin/' on the other hand, would regard 
it as the expression of the truth. It is 
not our business to choose between them. 

Where we shall exercise a choice is in the 
matter of the activity displayed by Dr. 
Spahn, the signatory, since the war, with 

1 Critique du liberalisme (Chronique de la Presse, 
1911, p. 794). 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 161 

seven other Catholics, of the manifesto 
of the ninety-three "Intellectuals." Quite 
recently (in May 1914) he issued a pamphlet 
through the publishers of the Volksverein, 
at Miinchen-Gladbach, entitled Im Kampf 
um unsere Zukunft, " The Fight for our 
Future." This is a national-immoralist 
effort. It begins by declaring that "it is 
the glory of States and nations that they 
cannot achieve external objects without 
sanguinary collisions (ohne auf blutigen 
Wider stand zutreffen). Such is the tone of 
this pamphlet, which is represented by its 
author as a contribution to the education of 
the German people. In the first chapter 
Dr. Spahn deals with France. He recalls 
the struggle of more than a thousand years 
which the two countries have waged against 
one another on the left bank of the Rhine, 
the present stake, and he considers that 
Germany, if defeated, would be thrown 
back upon the right bank. For this reason, 
disposing with a wave of the hand of the 
arguments of certain Germans who would 
" spare " Catholic France, he, the " man 
of the Centre," declares that " France must 
be hurled to the ground, so that she shall 



M 



162 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

cease once and for all to entertain any 
designs whatsoever upon Central Europe.' ' 
In his second chapter (on Austria and 
Russia) Spahn the Catholic casts amorous 
glances at orthodox Russia, confining him- 
self to expelling her from the Balkans. 
In his third chapter, on the other hand, 
he annihilates England, the country of 
religious liberty, so hospitable to the victims 
of the Kulturkampf. The fourth and last 
chapter proposes the eventual exercise of 
a stable world-policy by Protestant Ger- 
many. In closing, Dr. Spahn exalts un- 
ending war, in which he sees the only source 
of progress. 

Progress, according to Dr. Spahn, is only 
possible on condition that war is unbridled, 
on condition that it knows no limits either in 
space or in procedure. The more bloody 
it is, the more efficacious. Herr Erzberger, 
as we see, is not alone in his way of think- 
ing. Is this the language of a Catholic ? x 

But let us return to Dr. Spahn's friends, 

1 We have already commented upon the incessant 
repetition of this dogma. Like true Germans, Dr. 
Spahn and Herr Erzberger are only repeating the 
words of such predecessors as flatter their German- 
ism — which is only their egoism. — B.M. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 163 

to those who opened the gates of the 
" Tower " to him. We have spoken of 
Herr Bachem. This is what is thought of 
him by the i 1 Berlin management " — 

" A long time ago Julius Bachem was a 
deputy in the Prussian Landtag. Private 
reasons forced him to resign. This mis- 
adventure, instead of breaking him, freed 
him from the risks and difficulties of elec- 
tion. As a journalist he became a leader 
with ideas, and finally a master of men. 

" Julius Bachem had realised that with 
a disciplined or * regimented ' environment 
such as Catholic Germany on the morrow 
of the Bismarckian Kulturkampf, it was 
possible to dominate it by dominating the 
leaders of the organisation. To this enter- 
prise he devoted his resourceful talents. 
He completely succeeded. His Labour 
Unions, his clubs, his newspapers and 
reviews, enforce the party watchword from 
Cologne. 1 

"We know this watchword; and Herr 
Bachem has often expatiated upon it, 
notably in 1906, in the Historisch-Politische 

1 Critique du liberalisme (Chronique de la Presse, 
1911, p. 794). 



164 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

Blatter, in an article entitled ' We must 
emerge from the Tower.' The ' Tower/ as 
we know, is the Centre, called by Windt- 
horst ' The Tower of Ivory ' on account 
of its Catholic composition. 

" Herr Bachem wanted to ' intercon- 
fessionalise ' the Centre. But in what 
way? If he had merely demanded that 
the Centre should admit a larger number 1 
of Protestant deputies having the sincere 
intention of respecting and supporting its 
programme, and the desire to be elected 
by Protestants, this would have been 
accepted by all or nearly all the Catholics. 
But Herr Bachem wished generously to 
cede as many as fifty seats to the Protestant 
deputies, and these — note this well — the 
safest seats in the Centre. In this way, he 
said, the Centre would prove that it ' was 
not a confessional party/ 

" Herr Bachem's article caused a great 

deal of commotion. Many voices were 

raised in protest, but the discussion was 

1 From the outset it was recognised that the 
Centre might admit Protestants to its ranks as guests 
(Hospitanteri). Their number was always small. 
For example, in 1907, among 109 deputies of the 
Centre, there was only one Hospitant. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 165 

lacking in clearness. It was above all 
necessary to decide whether the Centre was 
a Catholic and * confessional ' party, and 
in what sense. 

" On April 13, 1909, which was Easter 
Tuesday, ten persons, the deputies Bitter 
and Roeren, Father Schopen, Father Frick, 
S.J., etc., met in Cologne for a private 
conversation, during which the questions 
which were at that time troubling Catholic 
opinion and even Catholic consciences were 
to be amicably discussed. 

" They came to an agreement on two 
points : (1) The Centre is a Catholic party, 
whose activity is in conformity with 
Catholic doctrine ; (2) It would be desirable 
that the Volksverein should place them- 
selves under the authority of the Bishops. 

" The matter should have remained secret 
until the moment when the ten deputies 
thought fit to make it known to the public. 
But the imprudence of one of them and the 
indiscretion of an outside person brought 
the matter to the knowledge of Herr Julius 
Bachem, the leader of the c declericalising ' 
movement. 

" Thereupon was commenced a campaign 



166 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

in the Catholic Press enlisted by him, or at 
least for his cause, under the orders of his 
Kolnische Volkszeitung. The members of 
the Conference were accused of misrepre- 
senting the nature of the Centre, and of 
making it appear to be a ' confessional ' 
party, which could only plunge it into 
difficulties with all the other parties; the 
latter would have the best of rights to say 
that the Centre was a foreign body in the 
living flesh of Germany, because it regarded 
everything from its ' confessional ■ point of 
view, which thought not of the welfare of 
the country, but of the welfare of the Church, 
and because in all its activities it allowed 
itself to be guided by the orders of Rome, 1 
etc. . . ." 

This serious question has been left un- 
solved. The Cologne management asserts 
that the Centre is a political party with a 
Christian basis, but it leaves us to under- 
stand that this Christianity comprises " only 
the doctrines common to Protestants and 
Catholics, a sort of super-Christianity, 
without any precise creed." 

1 Critique du liberalisme (Chronique de la Presse, 
op. cit., 1911). 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 167 

" The conversation of Easter Tuesday 
(April 13, 1909) had its sequel in the very 
heart of the Centre. The two deputies 
Bitter and Roeren, after a great deal of 
discussion, were obliged to sign a declar- 
ation stating that the Centre was not a 
confessional but a political party, which 
pursued its political objects on the basis of 
the Constitution of the Empire " (November 
28, 1909) . 1 

Kultur thus won all along the line, in 
the sense that the new policy of the Centre 
favoured Protestantism. Malicious persons 
recalled the fact that about 1835 Herr 
Bachem's grandfather had taken pains, on 
the occasion of some festival, to decorate 
his house with a carefully illuminated bust 
of Luther. 

These tendencies were henceforth to crop 
up on all sides in the de-Catholicised Centre. 
In 191 1 the party joined the Liberals and 
Socialists in order to give Alsace-Lorraine 
non-sectarian schools. The Catholics them- 
selves began gradually to regard the Centre 
as a peril, at least, for so long as it should 

1 Critique du liber alisme (Chronique de la Presse, 
op. cit., 1911). 



168 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

obey the instructions of Cologne. Abt 
Schopen, one of the members of the Con- 
ference of Easter Tuesday, even published 
a book entitled : Cologne, the Internal 
Danger to German Catholicism. 

But Cologne had become the Centre itself, 
to such a point that the adversaries of its 
declericalising and secularising tendencies 
found themselves expelled from the Party. 

This is what happened to Graf Oppers- 
dorff at the time of the 191 2 elections. 
He was erased from the list of the candi- 
dates for the Centre, as a punishment for 
opposing the candidature of Martin Spahn 
and the policy of Cologne. However, he 
was elected in another constituency. 

Why did the Centre thus reject the 
assistance of well-known Catholics, its 
traditional supporters, even though they 
might be, like Graf von Oppersdorff, a little 
inclined to blunder and give trouble? It 
was out of consideration for Protestantism, 
the instrument of Kultur. In November 
1 91 1 (the elections followed in January), 
" the Committee of the Conservative section 
of the Reichstag was said to have sent the 
Centre an ultimatum, according to which 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 169 

there was to be an end of ' hyper-Catholi- 
cism/ or else the Conservative section would 
break off all relations with the Centre. 
The Conservative section was compelled 
to take up this position on account of the 
Evangelical League." 1 

The case of Graf von Oppersdorff was 
not unique. Other sincere Catholics were 
excluded at the same time; for example, 
Herr Bitter and Herr Fleischer, both 
thoroughgoing supporters of the traditional 
Catholic Centre. 

" There was still one member of the 
Centre who caused Herr Bachem and his 
staff a great deal of anxiety. This was 
Herr Roeren, sometime Councillor of the 
Superior Court of Appeal at Cologne. 
Certain demagogues — who in Germany are 
only too often employed to carry out the 
orders of the leaders of the political and 
social movement of ' interconfessionalisa- 
tion ' — certain demagogues, at the moment 
of the elections, had endeavoured to deprive 
him of his mandate; without success, 

1 Correspondence de Cologne, cited in a letter from 
Berlin to L' Action frangaise, April 28, 1912, cited also 
in the Chronique de la Presse, 1912, p. 320. 



170 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

however, as the electors in Herr Roeren' s 
constituency of Sarrelouis-Sarrebourg re- 
fused to give these seductive agents a 
hearing. However, they managed to make 
things very difficult for Herr Roeren, 
despite his remarkable merits as founder 
and propagator of the League against 
Public Immorality; so that, weary of the 
vexations and annoyances of which he was 
the victim, he preferred to resign his double 
mandate to the Diet of the Empire and the 
Prussian Chamber, retiring into private life 
in March 1912/' x 

M. Priim, in his letter to Herr Erzberger, 
mentions the case of Herr Roeren as 
particularly painful. Herr Roeren, for that 
matter, explained to the Catholics of the 
whole world, and especially to the German 
Catholics, " why he left the Centre." This 
is the title of one of two little works written 
by Herr Roeren on this painful subject. 
The author sadly proves to us that the 
points of contact between Catholicism and 
the modern Centre are daily becoming 
fewer. For four years the Kolnische Volks- 

1 Letter from Berlin to La Croix of November 20, 
1913 (Chronique de la Presse, 1913, p. 783). 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 171 

zeitung has not ceased to abuse this ex- 
cellent Catholic. 

A similar adventure befell Prince von 
Loewenstein in the melancholy affair of 
the Windthorstbunde. 

" The leaders of the Windthorstbunde, 
the Windthorst Clubs, which form a sort of 
school and recruiting-ground for the party, 
cared no more for the opinions of the 
Bishops than do the present leaders of the 
Centre. Up to 1903 the Windthorstbunde 
had been openly Catholic in character; 
at this date they were ' interconfessional- 
ised ' by the General Assembly in Cologne. 
In 1907, at the Wiesbaden Assembly, the 
Bunde of Breslau and Essen sought to repeal 
this resolution; and it was the patron 
of the Windthorstbunde himself, Prince von 
Loewenstein, now a Dominican priest, 
who undertook this task. ' I should de- 
serve,' he said, ' to be shown ignominiously 
to the door if in my quality as patron I 
did not do my utmost to maintain the 
Catholic character of the Windthorstbunde.' 
In vain : the Essen-Breslau resolution was 
defeated. Then the Prince withdrew his 
patronage, stating that the resolution which 



172 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

had been adopted had transfixed his heart. 
He quitted the Assembly, to return on the 
following day, when he announced that all 
the Bishops of Germany, without exception, 
desired that the Windthorstbunde should 
remain Catholic. He was informed, in 
reply, that a resolution took precedence of 
a mere desire/' l 

This is how a party is " de-Catholicised/ ' 

On the very eve of the war two very 
remarkable events occurred which proved 
to what a point the Centre, as it submitted 
to the suggestions of Cologne, had ceased 
to maintain effective relations with Catholi- 
cism, although still professing to serve it. 

The first of these instances concerns a 
declaration drafted by the " National Com- 
mission of the German Centre/' dated 
February 8, 1914, which all members of the 
Party had to sign on pain of expulsion. 

Very long and finely spun, this declaration 
cannot be reproduced here in its entirety. 
Here is the striking analysis of this document 
which was published by a Belgian Catholic 
newspaper on April 4 of the same year — 

1 Letter from Berlin to La Croix of November 20, 
19 13 (Chronique de la Presse, 1913, p. 783). 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 173 

" The Centre is not a ' confessional ' 
party. It is not a Catholic party. But 
the Catholics must belong to the party of 
the Centre; they cannot form a party of 
their own. And they must submit to the 
policy of the Centre — to its religious policy, 
to begin with. And if they feel, as con- 
scientious Catholics, that this policy will 
not do, they must keep silence in the name 
of unity and obey it for the sake of dis- 
cipline^ — the discipline of the non-Catholic 
party of the Centre. And if they become 
restive, impelled by their ' clerical ' scruples, 
they are expelled from the party, with all 
the moral and material sequels of such 
expulsion in general, and with those peculiar 
to Catholic Germany. 

" We make no comment." 1 

But this is not all. There is better to come. 

" There exists in Germany a great 
Association of the Catholic Press, the ' St. 
Augustin Society for the Protection of the 
Catholic Press ' — Augustinus-Verein zur 
Pflege der Katholischen Presse. 

1 Correspondance Catholique of Gand (cited in the 
Chronique de la Presse, 1914, p. 259). This journal 
adopts the Berlin point of view. 



174 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

" This is plain enough, is it not? We 
have here not the non-confessional Centre ; 
no inter-confessional Guilds; but the 
' Catholic Press/ 

" How simple we are ! This title is 
printed in big letters at the head of circulars, 
to ensure that no one shall establish another 
Association of the Catholic Press. But 
in the text of the circulars, by a sleight of 
hand as audacious as it is habitual, the 
word ' Catholic ' is smuggled away and re- 
placed by the word ' Centrist.' The result ? 
But this is obvious : the members of the 
Augustinus-Verein must as such subscribe 
to the declaration of the Centre, on pain of 
expulsion from ' St. Augustin's Society for 
the Protection of the . . . Catholic . . . 
Press.' " 1 

This is how a Belgian Catholic j ournalist, 
four months before the war, appreciated 
the positions of Catholicism in its relations 
with the Centre. Involuntarily he drew 
a comparison between this almost anti- 
Catholic declaration and the anti-Modernist 

1 Correspondance Catholique of Gand (cited in the 
Chronique de la Presse, 1914, p. 259). 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 175 

declaration which was so ill received in 
Germany. The Centre had reached the 
stage of expelling from its midst the sin- 
cerest Catholics, for love of Protestantism 
and Kultur. 

The results of such an attitude are set 
forth by M. Priim. He denounces the 
journals of the Augustinus-Verein for their 
furious attacks upon the Catholics of 
Belgium. They had begun by practising 
upon the Catholics of Germany. 

The second event we have to mention is 
the condemnation by the Index, on June 3, 
1914, of Abt Theodor Wacker, for an 
address on "The Centre and Ecclesiastical 
Authority," which was included in the 
pamphlet Gegen die Quertreiber, 1 published 
at Essen, 1914. 

The Abt Wacker, curate of Zoehringen 
(in the arch-diocese of Fribourg in Baden), 
a leading member of the Centre in Baden, 
was the semi-official inspiration of the 
social doctrines of the Centre. We have 
no space to reproduce the analysis of his 
work as published by the Quademi Romani 

1 " Against the Makers of Trouble." 



176 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

of June 21, 1914. 1 If our readers will 
refer to this they will see what a gulf exists 
between his assertions and the pontifical 
instructions ! It would be difficult to con- 
tradict them more directly than this avowed 
" Centrist " has done. 

About the same time a German Fran- 
ciscan published a volume on Union in 
Faith, in which he made some very melan- 
choly assertions. In Germany Catholicism 
has lost its keenness, its spirit of conquest. 
The Protestants are almost alone in acting 
" confessionally/' 

One of those courageous reviews which 
were founded not long ago to fight in the 
name of Catholicism against the doctrines 
of Cologne, 2 the Petrus-Blatter of Treves, 
relates a curious anecdote in this connection 
in its issue for June 2, 1914 — 

A few years ago Herr Buchholz sent to 
an important " Centrist " newspaper an 

1 Reproduced by the Chronique de la Presse, 1914, 

P- 465. 

2 It is curious to observe that since 1910 many 
Catholic reviews have been founded to make open 
war upon the Centre. Besides the Petrus-Blatter 
we may mention the Stdnde-Ordnung (Coblentz) and 
Klarheit und Wahrheit (Berlin). 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 177 

article speaking of the duty incumbent 
upon Catholics to persuade their Protestant 
fellow-countrymen to come over to the 
true faith, and he urged that a movement 
to this end should be undertaken. The 
" Centrist " newspaper refused to insert 
the article, with the remark that the idea 
was excellent, but that " this would bring 
us into conflict with the management of 
the party." The author sent the article 
to a weekly paper; there also it was 
refused with the two words : " Regret 
impossibility." 

" So it is the management of the Centre, 
seconded by the Augustinus-Verein, which 
prevents any movement for the propaga- 
tion of Catholicism among Protestants. 
Yet this is by no means a question of 
a political movement, but of a purely 
religious undertaking." 1 

"This tells us much," says the Roman 
editor, " of the mental condition of the 
Centre." The war will have enabled us 
to consider in a light as yet unknown the 
results of this opportunist state of mind, 

1 See Quadevni Romani, June 21, 1914, cited in 
the Chronique de la Presse, 1914, p. 465. 
N 



178 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

which cares for nothing but material pros- 
perity, for power, by whatever means 
acquired, for Kultur, in a word, and for 
Germanism. 

However, we should be greatly mistaken 
were we to exaggerate the benefits which 
the Centre has derived from its complaisance 
toward the Protestants ; were we to regard 
it as able to rule and to lay down the law. 
The services which the Centre has rendered 
the evangelical Empire are greater than 
the benefits which it receives. The posi- 
tion of the Catholics and of Catholicism has 
not been greatly improved by the Centre; 
it is not so greatly superior to the state of 
subjection to which Bismarck reduced it. 
It is Protestantism which calls the tune in 
Germany. In Germany Catholics are only 
" citizens of the second class/' The Reichs- 
tag has for the last three years resounded 
with such complaints, and the least respect- 
able members of the Centre have echoed 
them — Herr Rost and Herr Bachem among 
others. With documents to hand, with 
statistics at their disposal, the German 
Catholics have been forced sadly to declare 
that the percentage of Catholic officials of 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 179 

all kinds, in the administrations and uni- 
versities, and of officers in the army, is far 
from corresponding with the importance of 
Catholicism and the number of Catholics 
in the Empire. The various Chancellors 
have never confided a portfolio to a Catholic. 
In Bavaria, a country almost entirely 
Catholic, this partiality verges on the 
scandalous; the great majority of the 
Ministers are Protestant. What are we to 
think of a party whose collaboration is so 
onesided l and its vanity so great ? 

However this may be, what we have 
just written will enable the reader to form 
a fairly clear idea of the intellectual and 
moral environment which gave birth to 
M. Prum's pamphlet, as well as to the old 
anxieties which are expressed therein. All 
these arise from the misdeeds of Germanism, 
the avowed corrupter of the Centre. 
***** 

1 We have just learned (May 1915) that Mgr. 
Benzler, the German Bishop of Metz, has now for- 
bidden in his diocese the worship of Joan of Arc, 
approved by the Church, and has also placed his 
Cathedral at the disposal of the Protestants, that 
these latter may hold their services in it. 
N 2 



180 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 



VI 

The Danger to Catholicism is in 
Germany 

It is no new thing, this warning of the 
serious dangers to which Germanism has 
exposed the Catholic doctrine and the 
influence of the Church. These dangers 
are of two kinds : theoretical, in so far as 
they affect dogma, thought, and intellect; 
practical, in so far as they urge the Govern- 
ments to anti-clericalism. 

In his recent article, 1 which we have 
already cited, Canon Gaudeau justly re- 
marks that it is only since Luther's days 
that there have been two Germanies, two 
Austrias, two Frances ; these Catholic, and 
those corrupted by the Reformation, and 
by this fact given over to modern anti- 
clericalism, individualism, materialism, re- 
volutionary socialism, atheism, and all the 
disorders of modern thought. In his mag- 
nificent lectures on the part of Germany 
in modern philosophy, soon to be published 

1 Le danger pour I'Eglise est en Allemagne, in Le 
Foi Catholique, April-May 1915. 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 181 

in book form, M. Jacques Maritain, with 
even greater force, describes, generation 
by generation, century by century, the 
growth, since Luther's time, of this dis- 
integrating Germanism, which is to-day 
poisoning Europe wherever Europe is 
poisoned. He puts a label upon each of the 
errors of our time, and this label is German. 1 
What are we to say of the practical and 
subterranean activity exercised in Europe, 
and above all in France, by Germanic 
statesmen, for the last forty-four years? 
The confessions of Mme. Juliette Adam, 
recently brought fully to light by M. Goyau, 
prove to satiety that French anti-clericalism 
is of immediate German origin. Bismarck 
was the real stage-manager of French anti- 
clericalism ; it was he who initiated this 
lamentable movement in France. It is 
historically proved that in 1874 Bismarck 
personally intervened with the French 

1 See, too, the latest work of Father A. M. Weiss, 
professor at Fribourg, Liberalismus und Christentum, 
Treves, 1914, Petrus-Verlag. In the appendix, " A 
Glance Back upon a Life of Labour directed against 
Liberalism," the apologist of Christianity relates in 
detail all the insults and outrages to which he has 
been subjected in Germany, 



182 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

Ambassador in Berlin, M. de Gontaut-Biron, 
in order to obtain anti-Catholic measures 
from the French Government. " As early 
as January 13, 1874, he was begging 
Gontaut to come to see him, and was de- 
manding that France should undertake 
some definite action against the Bishops/' 

In the following year he attacked the 
Pope himself, and wished to organise an 
international crusade against him, in which 
France was to play an important part : 
" Pius IX, had Europe obeyed Bismarck, 
would have been erased, in 1874 and 1875, 
from the list of sovereigns ; embassies and 
legations would have closed their doors, 
and would have left him alone, face to 
face with the Quirinal." Conservative 
France resisted Bismarck then; but he 
finally found his man (1876). Gambetta 
had neither the foresight nor the courage 
to resist the Bismarckian invitations, and 
it was at the Chancellor's orders that he 
engaged France in that anti-clerical policy 
which was to have such a great and grievous 
success. " Ah, my dear friend ! " confided 
Spuller to Mme. Edmond Adam, " how 
many times have I told you, and told you 



PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 188 

again, not to applaud, in Gambetta's 
speeches, his anti-clerical sallies ! You see 
to-day : anti-clericalism led him to Bis- 
marck and Bismarck to him. Beware of 
anti-clericalism : it is Prussian ! " J 

Yes, anti-clericalism is Prussian, and the 
victory of the Allies will be its defeat. 2 
This will not suit the formerly Catholic 
Centre and its deluded admirers. The 
Allies, in the overthrow of Christianity, 
provoked by Germany and her methods, 
are doing their best to safeguard the vener- 

1 See Georges Goyau, Bismarck et I'Sglise : Le 
Culturkampf, vol. ii. chaps, viii., ix., x. Dreux, 
DernUres anndes de I'ambassade Gontaut-Biron : " If 
Bismarck is not the inventor of the word ' clericalism/ " 
writes Gontaut, " it is he who has been its most adroit 
and indefatigable vulgariser," p. 279. Mme. Juliette 
Adam, Nos amities politiques apres I 'abandon de la 
revanche, p. 439. Hohenlohe, Denkwiirdigkeiten, p. 
186. Jacques Bainville, Bismarck et la France; M. de 
Roux, La Ripublique de Bismarck. 

2 This is the opinion of Senor Miguel de Unamuno, 
sometime Rector of the University of Salamanca; 
the most interesting of modern Spanish writers. 
" What is at stake, in my opinion, is nothing less 
than the future of Christian law, and of Christianity 
even, which is threatened at its foundations by the 
paganism of this Realfolitik of Kultur." (Cited by 
Imbart de la Tour in his suggestive pamphlet U Opinion 
catholique et la guerre.) Pages actuelles, No. 26. 



184 PAN-GERMANISM v. CHRISTENDOM 

able relics of the old Christian law, the 
foundation of civilisation. 

More than once we have asked ourselves 
what Windthorst and his friends would 
have thought of the sanguinary adventure 
into which Wilhelm II has hurled the Old 
World; what they would think of their 
degenerate successors, the Erzbergers and 
Spahns. Yes, what would Windthorst say on 
perceiving amid his flock these worshippers 
of force and these preachers of violence ? 

Windthorst, without a doubt, would 
speak as M. Priim has spoken. No one, in 
Germany, whether in the Catholic camp 
or the Protestant, has perceived anything 
exaggerated in Herr Erzberger's sanguinary 
philippics against the adversaries of Ger- 
many. Deutschland iiber alles ! But Windt- 
horst has found in Luxembourg a disciple to 
defend the chosen stronghold of Catholicism, 
who magnanimously reminds the Centre of 
the eternal precepts of the Gospel, which that 
once Catholic party has betrayed for Kultur. 

3JC 3p *|* *p *|» 

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